大象传媒

The Story is submitted by a volunteer on behalf of Radio Bristol Action Desk at City of Bristol college

Good Friday 1941, when I was 8 (born in 1933).When there was an Air Raid, which most nights, my father would call to me to get up and come down to the shelter. It was an Anderson shelter at the bottom of a 90ft garden just for our family, It was usually midnight when I was asleep, I had a younger brother Robert and sister Patricia. The little ones would be carried but I was old enough to walk. On the only night I disobeyed my father I put my head back on the pillow and fell asleep. I was woken up to a crackling noise! An incendiary bomb had come through the roof and must have hit the pillow my head was on, because the pillow was scorched and the crackling that woke me up was the incendiary bomb burning its way through the floor boards of my bedroom. I shouted out and by this time my father was on his way up the stairs to fetch me and by the time he had got to the bomb it had gone through the ceiling and was on top of the Welsh Dresser. As my father was in the Home Guard and was an Air Raid Warden he had a stirrup pump and a couple of sandbags. He put the fire out and he reported it from the special telephone box at the top of the street. We were then sent down to the shelter and I remember just the one fireman in a dark blue uniform came to check if we were safe. It was a very bad night that night, and as a result of this raid they decided to evacuate the children. A few months later we were evacuated, and the eligible ages were between 8 and 12. My brother and sister were too young so I went with Gwyn (Mick) Miller from my school. We caught the train from Shirehampton to Temple Meads, and then to Exeter where we were met by coaches. When our coach reached the villages we were lined up outside the coach for the landladies who had decided to take us in, and they were quite well paid so we were told and they had our Ration Books. Mick Miller had ginger hair and a firey look about him, and I looked very shabby. As a result we were the last to be selected and the lady had no choice! I felt relieved as I saw some of the other landladies and I didn't like the look of them and thought 'I hope she does't take me'. It was Mrs Kelly, Triggers Cottage, Wembworthy, Chulmey. N Devon. She was wonderful, she was short and dumpy, she had a daughter around our age Gwenny, and she treated the three of us exactly the same. It was the best 2 1/2 years I have had for many a year, as life at home was not that good. Even there I could not escape the bombs because one morning Mick and I woke up to see the ceiling was cracked and billowing down with plaster over the bedclothes. We crept downstairs looking for Mrs Kelly and her daughter and arrived in the kitchen to find a door that we had been told never to touch was slightly open. Curiousity came over us and we pushed the door open to find Mrs Kelly and her daughter sitting on a bench in a little cellar. 'Come on down here quickly' so I said 'what't the matter?'. Look out of the kitchen window she said and there was this big crater in the next field with parachute material all around the edges. The newspaper printed later that it was a landmine, hence the parachutes. The German bomber had been chased by two Spitfires and had jettisoned two landmines to get away (though we only ever saw one crater)

The school had just one big room, with a coke burning stove in the centre. The 4 classes took place in the same room and it worked quite well. the stove had a special warming area round the chimney with two metal doors with shelves to heat up the pasties and pies brought in by the children for their lunch. The locals had the hot part and the evacuees had the warm part, so the evacuees were discriminated against!

On VE Day we had a Street Party. There was money left over, so it was decided to organise a charabanc outing to Weston super Mare one year later. Barry has a photo of all those who went. One of the three charabancs broke down near the Star and all the passengers had to get out. the driver succeeded in making repairs. The coach company was called Vincent coaches of Avonmouth.

Barry sent this photo to Shire Newspaper and the Bristol Evening Post in January 1992 and was amazed to be contacted by people from Perth and Adelaide,

Baker for 15 years,

1 Doddersham Walk, Oldbury Court, BS6 2QE 01179 586 305

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