大象传媒

We lived at Whitehall, Bristol. I visited my grandmother at Filton. This was on the first/main raid on Bristol. We were walking over the bridge over Horfield Station - this was my father and mother and sister - the bombs starting dropping. We stopped and looked and saw and heard bombs dropping, tremendous lights flashing, debris flying up in the air. My mother said "My legs have gone". We looked at the time and in retrospect we found out that this was the time our house was bombed. We had no transport (there was no transport at all at that time) and were walking home from Filton to Whitehall. This would be about 10 o'clock and some lady saw us walking back to Filton (it would have been about five miles) and asked us where we were going. She told us not to walk back and to stay the night with her. My next recollection is walking under Easton Arch. As we turned the corner into Whitehall Road my mother said "I hope the windows are still in".

Walking into Vicarage Road (where we lived), no windows and no house. Seven houses were decimated. The bomb had dropped immediately outside our house. One of the fortunate things of this was two of my brothers never left the house for any sirens. This particular night for some reason they did. One wall was standing in the house and on that wall the canary cage. My brother was there at the time and looked into the cage, and the canary had survived. Strangely two doors from us, two adults, two children and one dog were found in the Anderson Shelter at the back of their house all dead.

No house, no clothes, where does one go? Who would take in two adults, four children and a four year old, and a canary at the time? Someone did, and in time I think it was about three days, we moved into a house in Carlton Park. The bombs must have followed us because father was digging up the garden a couple of weeks later and founds the fins of a bomb poking up. From there we (me and my two sisters and I)were evacuated to St Austell to a lady who had never had any children. She was a very austere woman but really in retrospect it must have been a shock for her.

She used to bake cakes and she loved saffron. I can't stand the smell or taste of this to this day. She was very strict. I remember my fifth birthday, sitting on a bench seat just inside the door (it was a very old cottage), unwrapping soldiers and placing them on the side, when suddenly another toy soldier wrapped up appeared beside it. I thought by the time I'd finished I'd have an army, but in effect it was six - as I was putting them down they were wrapping them up again!

My wife and I visited the house again in 2001. It was very difficult to find. Whilst I thought we were just two houses in the country, there were actually 20 or 30 houses. The place and the house had not really changed. We spoke to the woman who was resident in the house now, and she was very interested and asked us in. I gave her my memory of the layout, describing the kitchen and her words were "I often wondered why that door was in that particular place". I explained it to her. No outdoor toilet now, only inside.

The school we had to attend was over about four fields and a bull to negotiate. We used to run across that field very fast. We stayed about six months but were very homesick and begged mum to bring us back, which they did and we moved into 64 Whitehall Road. With an old tin bath and chickens in the back garden for eggs. We stayed here until the end of the war when our house was rebuilt.

My father was a mainline train engine driver, so obviously he never went to war. My eldest brother was an air raid warden, not able to go to war because of a weakness in his heart caused by Scarlet Fever as a child. My second eldest brother joined the Navy. One of his tales was he was having a tooth removed on board when a torpedo hit the boat and he was rescued from that. He never told me what happened to the tooth.

My mum was born in 1902 and I often wonder how she managed to keep her sanity - going through two world wars, losing everything in her house, and bringing up five children. Maybe the hard life was good for us, and she lived to 1987.

We never saw bananas or apples, we did manage a penny bag of pinky fruit which was oranges starting to turn. My wife, who I didn't know at the time, being a country girl, had no such problems with orchards in abundance. They didn't know how the other half lived. It's a shame we couldn't have got together in those days and shared the fruit.

With no fat available mother used to send me to Devon Road where they sold fat, but the queue outside would be hundreds of yards long, and if I hadn't returned in time to go to school mother would take my position.

To collect coal. We would hire a cart for sixpence, wheel the cart to the Coke Works at Eastville, queue an awful long time for half a hundred weight of coke, then wheel it back home. A round trip of about two miles. Always queueing.

When I was about ten I was sent quite often to the Plough Inn in Easton to collect a jug full of beer and maybe ten Woodbines, a total cost of about six pence I expect. Most shops would close early and our local would allow us to knock on the back door and obtain what we wanted. We never had much money and mum gave me a two shilling piece and I remember standing at the side door tapping the ten pence piece against the stone and it suddenly went in the gap between the stone. I had to tell mum we had no money, as I couldn't get it out. I can't remember her shouting at all.

The toilet at Whitehall Road was in the back garden and as we kept chickens which were always free to range, I and everyone else had to take a stick to keep the chickens at bay whilst we went to the toilet because father for some reason or other, bought baby chicks which always turned out to be Rode Island Reds which were fighting birds.

Here I am sixty eight years of age and the only blot on my character was riding along Easton Road on my bicycle at 11 years of age, caught by the policeman with no rear lights. Father had to pay a two and sixpenny fine for that. Trips to Severn Beach on my bike every weekend was made much easier if you could catch hold of the back of a lorry for a tow.

My two sisters and their husbands returned to Penrhyn, St Austell. They visited the school and quite a number of people were still living in the vicinity, gave them names and addresses to visit and in the course of these visits found two or three fellows who were little beaux from that area.

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