大象传媒

I was born and bred in Kingswood near Bristol and lived with my parents and my elder sister in a small house, which had a cellar underneath. During the war we used this as a shelter. It had a ladder to climb down and was fitted out with two beds, a small heater and best of all a jar of boiled sweets, which was an incentive to me to go quickly down the ladder when there was a raid.

On the night of the big Blitz on Bristol in November 1940, and I was six years old, the raid started early and before we could go down to the cellar there was a knock at the door and five people asked to come in as the bombs were falling and the mother who must have been in her eighties was exhausted from lying in the road as shelter. Because of her state she was not able to get down the ladder, so we all decided to stay in the lounge the centre of the house. Being young I had to use the bathroom and my mother came with me as this was at the back of the house. We had just got back and my mother was standing near the French doors as the bomb dropped. (We discovered afterwards that it was a land 鈥攎ine that ended up our apple tree. Had it hit the floor we would all have been killed) my mother took the full force of the blast, which blew, off her lower left leg. I remember the dust and debris falling all around and I was up to my waist and could hardly move. The old lady had been seated in the pantry where my mother used to store her pickles and jams and they all came down over the lady, but otherwise she was unhurt. My sister was hit in the head and received a large cut but had no further injuries. My dad rounded us up and we struggled to get what remained of the front door. Opposite our house was a large house, which was used at the time as a district nurses home. All the telephone lines were down and I remember my Dad trying to kick them out of the way as he carried my mother across the road. In doing so he cricked his back and suffered with back pain ever more. In the nursed house lots of other people had gathered and they sat my mother on a chair with her injured leg suspended above an enamel bowl and proceeded to tend to the other superficial wounds to her arms and head. My sister and I were placed behind a curtain on a bed but I remember looking at my mum and wanting them to do something to her leg, but with hindsight I suppose there was nothing they could do.

My mother鈥檚 friend lived across the road and luckily the friend鈥檚 brother who was an ambulance driver had come down to see if they were alright and took mum to Costa hospital. I remember her saying that there were so many causalities that night she was laid on the cold floor of the corridor with many other people and it was not until early the next lunchtime that she was treated.

When the raid finally calmed down my dad took my sister and I on his motorbike to his friend鈥檚 house in Staple Hill. Unfortunately on the way, as he was not able to use the headlight on the bike and he also forgot the bend in Park Rd, we all ended up in the hedge, but with no ill effects. The friends were in the air-raid shelter and we stayed there until the morning.

In the meantime my aunt who had been to church at Hanham had returned to find our house and my grandmother鈥檚 in ruins, but there were people in both of them stealing from the remains of our belongings, I never forgot that.

This one night changed the lives of our family forever, as it must have done for many other people who were caught up in the bombing. Let鈥檚 hope we never have another night like it.

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