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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Jenny Christian of the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library on behalf of Olive Anthony and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

My father was called up during the war to
go into the fire service (AFS), based at Bethel Street. Although I was born in Norwich and had many relatives in the city, we moved just before the war to Costessey. On the night of the Blitz, he was on call. There were no phones or communication – Mum and I were at home in our shelter at the bottom of the garden. We had a little Norwich canary called Jimmy, and Mum used to insist that he came into the shelter with us. I was a child in the war. At first, we used the Anderson in the garden, but Mum and I found it too lonely, so then we went to the street shelter. After that, Jimmy used to have to go under the table at home!

On the night of the Blitz, the whole city was alight. The noise was horrendous. We were in the street shelter where there were bunks put up. I always remember the smell – they were so ‘fousty’. The thing that frightened me – I was seven at the time – was hearing Lord HaHa (William Joyce) on the radio saying ‘Germany calling, Germany calling’. The city hall had not long been built, and he used to say that the Germans would ‘put paid to it before we had paid for it’. There was a clock in Samuel’s opposite city hall, and Joyce even knew the time of it. I was always frightened that he was actually in Norwich and every time I went into the city, I used to look to make sure city hall was still there.

After the big raid, my father took me on a bicycle down Rose Lane where Morgan’s Brewery was. They had been hit, and the beer was running down the road! My mother swore when my father had come home that he’d been drinking, but the smell was actually because he’d been paddling in all the beer!

There was an underground air raid shelter in Chapelfield gardens. Some people were killed in it, as it had a direct hit. It was always stated that it was sealed up again with people still in it – but no-one seems to know if that’s true. I wonder…?

The night Norwich got blitzed (April 1942), all my relatives in Norwich had had their places bombed, so they walked up to Costessey to our house, carrying their mattresses on prams.

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