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I lived in Bristol during the war and it was bombed quite considerably. I remember the first blitz; it was on the 24th November 1940 at 6.30 pm. Our part of the city wasn’t bombed too much that night, but the entire historic city centre was pretty much destroyed. At half past midnight, the all-clear was sounded. My dad took me out of the front door and pointed to the sky. It was all red and smoky. He said, ‘That’s your city burning, boy. That’s a sight you’ll never forget.’
We had a few air raids but in January, we had a blitz that lasted twelve hours and started about 6.30 in the evening. It was a very cold night and a lot of our area was bombed. Because we had a small yard instead of a garden, we didn’t have a proper shelter. So my parents put a mattress under the table and my brother and I slept there. When the bombing became bad, my parents would come, too. I remember the whistling of the bombs landing and the crack of anti- aircraft fire. In lulls of the bombing, my parents would stand up and stretch themselves and warm themselves in front of the fire, but almost at once, another stick of bombs would come and they’d dive back under the table. Actually, it was very funny!
My school was hit by a bomb and destroyed. Next morning, we went to have a look, but were told to go home again and we’d be told where to go to school soon. On the way home, I passed a line of bombed houses and saw my vicar wearing a white tin hat and ARP (Air Raid Precautions) overalls, crawling out from the ruins. My mother later explained he’d been comforting someone who had been injured and may have died. I was the first time I realised that vicars did something else but take services. When I got home, my father was there and took me into the city were his office had been badly damaged. I had to sit in a pub yard to keep and eye on what he’d been able to salvage. On the way, he took me round what had been part of the business centre of Bristol to show me the burnt and destroyed buildings; a very large area was completely flat. A group of soldiers had a rope around a dangerous chimney stack to pull it down. On the end of the rope was a very large sergeant, who didn’t do much, except tell them to pull harder. Suddenly, the rope snapped and they all fell back and sat on him! It was a lovely moment!
For some weeks, he had half time school, sharing a building of a neighbouring school. Then at the beginning of February, we were evacuated to Ilfracombe in Devon. I remember the soldiers in the next train passing along their sandwiches to us. We got there and they got us into the cinema for the people to pick us. All of the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girls went first. Being a regular looking little 9 year old boy, I was one of the last to go.
Life during evacuation was really grim. My parents came to visit near to Easter. While they were down, a telegram came, saying our house had been bombed. My parents took me to a small village in Somerset and we found lodgings there for a while. Later on, we moved back to Bristol. I remember that the last comb dropped on the city very narrowly missed our house.

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