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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer from Age Concern, Dorchester on behalf of Mrs M H Purrell, and has been added to the site with her permission. Mrs Purrell fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was born in 1908. I was married at the beginning of the war and we were running a little Preparatory School for boys at Clifton, Bristol. All the pupils disappeared so we were left without any school.

We had a house at Clifton and could look through the window and see Bristol on fire. It was terrible. Then one night at 6 pm a German plane came over to bomb Filton Aerodrome.

My husband was an Air Raid Warden (because he was in a reserve occupation as a teacher). He was in charge of other wardens and he had to visit houses which were on fire after being bombed. He had to go to see a house which was completely on fire and try to put it out. He said that it was a very vivid experience for him.

We had a private air raid shelter in the garden, but we never went into it. We had been out and the neighbours said that they thought that there was a bomb in our house — but there wasn’t one. We lived in an atmosphere of fear. You were waiting to see if you were going to be bombed. We sat under the table.

My mother was always frightened and always turning to me. She lived by the seaside at Weston-super-Mare and you could see all the coast alive in flames. It was a time of great fear. I was terrified I can tell you that.

I can remember my Aunt coming from the country and being horrified by the barrage balloons. They were huge and obliterated everything really.

One time, when we were visiting my in-laws in Knowle, Bristol, the sirens went off. We had to return because my husband was a warden. As we drove through Bristol there was no traffic and no sound. It was a wonderful experience, really.

Then my husband got a job teaching Classics in a school which was evacuated to mid-Wales, so we moved to Wales. It was a resident job. We lived in rooms in a Welsh house at Llanartydwells. In that house there were complaints going on all day long. My mother joined us because she was bombed out in Somerset. We were never bombed at Llanartydwells.

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