大象传媒

My father had remarried and in 1940 I came up to live with him and his new wife in Plymouth just before Christmas. This was followed of course by the Blitz of Plymouth in 1941. When the Blitz happened I was at St. Budeaux, so of course they were aiming for the railway bridge to Cornwall, and the armourment depots at Torpoint. I was just five years old and we obviously went down to the air raid shelter every night. We used to sleep with a little case by our beds, so that all you had to do was to pick it up and go.

The worst night as far as I was concerned, was a very heavy night of bombing. The house next door to us was a fairly new block of flats, and they鈥檇 been built about ten years before the war. Well, on this particular night my step mother and I were in the air raid shelter and even today I can hear the noise of the basket full of incendiaries that came down and landed on the flats next door. My step mother turned me over onto my stomach and said 鈥淭his is it Angela, this is the end鈥� and we obviously thought we were going to die. Our house was saved; the firemen came and splayed the water on our house which saved the windows which had broken and things like that, but it wasn鈥檛 really that damaged.

That following day we went to where my stepmother came from, which was in Slapton, and we stayed with her family. That night, although I can remember it to this day so clearly, they woke me up to show me the glow of Plymouth burning in the sky. I鈥檓 glad that they did because here I am almost seventy, but I still remember it so clearly.

I can remember my grandmother saving up their sweet coupons and sending it up to me so I could have a few extra sweets. I can remember not being able to have fruit, and when we saw a banana, thought what on earth is this yellow thing? How do you eat it? Towards the end of the war when the Americans came over to practise the D Day landings, we used to go to a church at Crownhill and we鈥檇 walk by the barracks where the Americans were stationed and they used to pass us sweets through the railings 鈥� we thought that was wonderful! I can remember seeing them march past my dad鈥檚 bungalow where we used to live, to go off to embark for the D Day landings. Hundreds and hundreds of them, I鈥檝e often wondered how many of them came back 鈥� such a very sad time of everyone鈥檚 life wasn鈥檛 it? Going back to Slapton, there used to be a hotel on the beach, and my step mother鈥檚 family鈥檚 dog went down on to the beach one day and way blown to smithereens because it was all mined. There鈥檚 a photograph of that at Torcross, by Slapton Sands, and it does mention the family dog 鈥� Skipper.

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