- Contributed by听
- Norfolk Adult Education Service
- People in story:听
- Gwen Smith
- Location of story:听
- Norwich
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A3130174
- Contributed on:听
- 14 October 2004
This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Gwen Smith and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.
At the start of the war I was 20 years old and had just got married. My husband was called up and sent into the Air Force. I lived in Glebe Road in Norwich on my own, but had a baby daughter in July 1940.
The Blitz in Norwich started on April 27th 1942. We had had a few bombs before then, but never a blitz. It was a bright moonlit night and the warning went. When I went to open the door to go to the shelter it was as bright as daylight outside with all the flares. I rushed upstairs to my baby and picked her up on her mattress, and took her into the pantry which was a cupboard under the stairs. I crouched over her to make sure nothing fell on her. The house was shaking. The bombing went on for a couple of hours, and afterwards I had a cup of tea as my mouth was so dry. My daughter slept through it all.
It happened again on the Wednesday and there were more incendiaries. We had barrage balloons up by then. They burnt Curls, Caley鈥檚, Bonds and the thatched tearooms. When Caley鈥檚 caught fire we were showered with sparks. All you could smell on the Thursday morning was burning.
Our water was cut off as the water mains were bombed and we had to go across to the allotments to get fresh water from a standpipe.
On the Thursday morning our windows were blown in by an unexploded bomb on the allotments. My Mum and Dad came over from Lingwood and said I was to go and stay with them. We walked to Thorpe Station to get a train to Lingwood on the Thursday morning, and had to take the long way round as the city centre was full of firemen and bomb sites.
My husband and I cycled to the cemetery about a week later to pay our respects to those who had died. It was terrible to see all those graves.
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