大象传媒

LEAVING THE CITY TO ESCAPE THE BOMBS

I have very clear memories of the blitz of Sunday November 24th 1940.
Aged just seven, I was travelling with my parents and other family members from Lawrence Hill to Coronation Road, Southville.
When we got off the tram in Old Market and heard the air-raid sirens and saw flares in the sky, we stood in a shop doorway in Tower Hill, trying to decide what to do next.
A policeman came along and directed us to a shelter at Tower Hill Clinic.
There were quite a few people in there and we joined them, throwing ourselves to the floor each time a bomb whizzed overhead.
We stayed there for the duration of the raid which ended about midnight.
I was the youngest person there and someone gave me two china ornaments for being good.
We emerged from the shelter to find everything around us flattened and on fire.
That was the night Bristol lost its Wine Street/Castle Street shops.
We started to walk on to Southville through all the debris.
The heat was fierce and the roads strewn with broken glass and the contents of shops and their window displays.
When we eventually reached our destination in Coronation Road we found a crater from an incendiary bomb in the front lawn.
We eventually got to bed only to be woken again by a policeman telling us that there was an unexploded bomb just around the corner and that we had to go and stay with friends in a safe area.
At school we were told about being evacuated.
I wanted to go but, as an only child, the decision to let me go must have been very hard for my parents.
But in the spring of 1941 I joined many other children, all wearing name labels on our coats and carrying the obligatory gas masks.
We were taken by coach from Alexandra Park School in Fishponds to Stapleton Road station and put on board a train to an unknown destination in the countryside.
When we arrived in Taunton we were taken to various schools to be billeted.
I was taken to a little village near Wellington called Samford Arundel, and waited there with other children until the people who had agreed to take evacuees arrived to choose which ones they wanted.
I was lucky, and with another girl, Mary, were among the first to be chosen.
We were very fortunate and went to live in a new house with a lovely couple with two children of their own.
鈥淯ncle鈥� Jack worked on the nearby farm and the house went with his job.
My companion from Bristol got homesick very quickly and returned but I stayed for a couple of years and became one of the family.
On arrival, I remember 鈥淎untie鈥� brushing my hair non-stop for a very long time.
I was later to discover that she鈥檇 previously had evacuees from London who had had head lice and she was just checking me out. I attended the village school which consisted of two classrooms and accommodated children between the ages of five and eleven.
I had a very happy time, spending many hours around the farm and learning much about country life.
I was one of the lucky ones and I am still in touch with the family.
Ironically, there were no more bad air raids on Bristol after I left.

B.Lang
Downend. Bristol

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