大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Callington U3A csv story collectors Peter and Judy Foweraker, on behalf of Reg Hawkings, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I was 15 years old at the start of the war and lived at 22 South Hill, Stoke, Plymouth. I had just signed on to work in the Dockyard, and was still in the Dockyard until 1942 when I was called up at 18.

In 1941, when the bombing started, we had an Anderson Shelter in our back garden, in which Mother and the rest of the family used to go in, but I could never go in the shelter, I was always stood up at the back door, as I was used to being out and about, and whilst I stood up at the back door I was able to witness the actual bombing. The back of our house looked across at Whittington, or Waterloo Street, which was at right angles to our house so I could look across to the back of the Co-op, and that was when the Co-op got a direct hit.

Then, the next night, when the school down the road caught fire, myself and the chappie who also lived in our house, were walking down towards the school to see if we could do anything, but when I got to where the Co-op had been 鈥� because we were at the front of the Co-op then 鈥� something caused me to look around, I don鈥檛 know why, and through the gap where they had been bombed the night before, I could see the windows at the back of our house all lit up, and that our house was on fire. So we immediately turned round and ran back home. By this time Mother and them had realised that we weren鈥檛 there and they were in a panic. They thought we were in our house or upstairs trying to get out. Basically speaking, we then hauled everything away from the fire. We piled what we could onto the tabletop and took hold of the four corners and, together with what furniture we could get, we just shoved everything out into the road. I slept out there then for the rest of the night!

What had fallen on to the house was a part of a cluster of incendiary bombs, which used to be called a 鈥楳olotov Breadbasket鈥�. After we got what we could out of the house, we went up to the attic and found that the fire had actually started next door. Anyway, we started hacking away at the roof and tried to get it to stop burning there, but the next door people were away - her husband was on the cruiser Exeter as it turned out 鈥� so we tried to break the windows as everything was locked up, but you just couldn鈥檛 break the glass as it was so molten, and we had to wait until we could get a pump around.

The next night a policemen told us that there was an unexploded bomb in the back garden of the house next door, and said we would be all right so long as we slept in the front of the house. The family all slept in the front of the house. However, I was really tired out and slept in the basement at the back of the house. The bomb went off during the night and I never heard a thing! They rushed down expecting to find me buried, but I woke to find a chicken running around and Mother worrying that I would have to be dug out.

Then, we had another incendiary at the bottom of our garden, which I picked it up with the dustbin lid - and a shovel!

Whilst I was still at work in the Dockyard between 1939 and 1942, I was doing my fire fighting. Each of us in the Dockyard had to do one night of fire watching. One night the oil tanks over at Hooe were hit. My fire watching duty was at the extreme end of south yard by the King Billy statue, in a pumping station. That night all of Mount Edgecombe was like a fairyland, just thousands and thousands of incendiary bombs, because that鈥檚 how they used to drop them, in big canastas. Mind you one of the biggest hazards, apart from the bombs, was the shrapnel. You could hear it coming, just like a swarm of bees, and one little bit of it could kill you, but of course, that was mainly from anti aircraft fire 鈥� friendly fire!

After the bombings, we were moved to another house at Mill Bridge, and one night when I came home from ordinary night shift at the dockyard, across the road about 20 yards away was all sectioned off, because of an unexploded bomb. There again, the bedroom that I used to sleep in when I was on night shift was at the top - looking out over this activity! Of course the police were there and they said it was up to me if I wanted to go to the back of the house. The explosive squad were on their way right then, but, I watched from my bedroom window and I actually saw them pull this bomb right out of the hole - it was the size of a pillar box (several times I鈥檝e said this, and somebody once said, 鈥渨ell, perhaps it was a pillar box鈥�!) It was all a sort of rusty colour; they winched it up - and that was that.

By that time I was also an Air-raid Warden, and went out with my whistle and rattle in Valetort Road in Plymouth, which ran parallel with Morsewell Road.

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