大象传媒

We were living in Portsmouth on the day war was declared, I was 7 years old and my sister was 2. That morning she fell down the stairs from top to bottom. The doctor was called and fortunately she wasn't badly hurt, but he said to my mother,"I would get these children out of here as soon as possible, because the Germans will be over bombing the docks". That evening my father took us to Bournemouth to stay with relatives, however, nothing happened so we came back to Portsmouth.

The following year my father's job was transferred to Bristol,so we moved there staying again with relatives, until we found a house. When the bombing started, a raid could happen at any time of the day or night.

I remember one day, my mother was at the hairdresser's under the dryer, when the hairdresser came and said, "Mrs Williams there are waves of bombers overhead, you must come down to the shelter". At that time my father was at his office, I was at school and my sister was with a neighbour - we were all in different places. We were alright,but my poor mother was terrified.

My school had a shelter underneath the playground and half of the children went to school in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. I can remember one day looking up through the entrance to the shelter and watching two planes having a dog fight.You knew one or both of the planes would come down, but you were not sure where - fortunately it was not on the school.

There was an Anderson shelter in our neighbour's garden which we shared with them. They also had children and every night we would gather up food, drinks, and gas masks and make our way down to the shelter just in case there was a raid. We children thought it was great fun as we played games, had our food and drinks, sang songs, and then went to sleep. Sometimes there was a raid and sometimes not.
When the winter came, it was very cold down there, so my father said "We will either die of the cold if we continue staying in the shelter,or die of the bombs if we stay in the house". So he cleared the bedroom over the dining room and moved a double bed into the dining room and the 4 of us slept under it.

When the bombing started with a vengeance, I used to dread watching the clock ticking towards 6 o'clock in the evening because, as soon as it reached it, the sirens would go and we would get under the bed and stay there until midnight, night after night for several weeks. In the mornings we were shattered, and I often missed school because I was so tired, having been up most of the night.

We were all under the bed one night when a bomb landed at the bottom of the garden, taking off the roof, and shattering all the windows. I can remember it sounded as if it had hit the house. After the raid, we walked around the house, crunching on broken glass.

After that my father sent us all down to Taunton to stay with my grandparents, but he stayed in Bristol, which was a worry for my mother. My aunt who lived across the road from us, used to laugh at my mother for getting up and coming downstairs if the sirens went off, my mother said to her, "If you had lived through what we have, you would come downstairs too!"

This story was submitted to the People's War website by a volunteer from AWLHRG on behalf of Jean Walters and has been added to this site with her permission. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions

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