大象传媒

The first shelter memory must have been the 'Morrison Shelter' - all I really remember was a sort of playhouse under the table.

The Anderson Shelter though was very different. My father dug it into the back garden - and I have a clear picture of being woken up from sleep and being carried downstairs into the garden and down into the shelter. I must have been six years old.

Later as the Blitz on Plymouth got worse, beds were made up in the shelter and we went to sleep in there rather than in our house.

At first it seemed an exciting adventure, but then the all pervading smell of damp, the cramped conditions and the noises outside, of planes, bombs and sirens (I suppose these must have been on vehicles), were very tiring.

The noise of the All Clear, the long continuous note was such a relief, and everyone came outside into the street to stand together and talk about the night. In daylight we kids would collect the burned and twisted metal that was shrapnel and it was considered a great prize.

Our street was Glanville Street (behind Plymouth Public Secondary School), and close to Portland Square where the public shelter was hit and so many died. But for our own Anderson Shelter I would have been in there.

After one bad raid I remember being taken to see the burning buildings and the black smoke and flames from the City centre. These flames seemed to be reflecting off the night sky.

There was a particular smell caused by incendiary bombs setting fire to attics and the timbers and rubbish contained in them. It was a very particular smell - and even now some 60 years later someone will be burning non-garden rubbish, and in an instant I'm back standing in that street.

Next day I remember going into the middle of Plymouth to stare at the gaps in the buldings and as time went on they got larger and there were more of them.

At other times our gas was cut off, and Mum carried food to a communal kitchen to be cooked - this was in Ebrington Street I think. There was no fruit of course and we longed for it. Rumours of fruit in a shop would bring queues of people to stand there and I've done that many times. We wheeled a pram along on one occasion to collect coal because deliveries had ceased and I helped to push it.

Later on towards the end of 1942 an unexploded bomb went off near a ladder where my father (a sign-writer) was working and he was badly injured. I was evacuated to Newquay where a big build-up of American G.I's was under way. But that's another story.

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