大象传媒

Bristol Blitzed

Prior to the first real Blitz I had worked at the A.R.P report central in Redland, but up to this time there had been very little enemy activity. On that fateful Sunday evening I was with my cousin Mary, visiting friends at Headley park, in South Bristol. Ironically, Mary had been evacuated to my mother鈥檚 for safety from the south coast. The Air Raid warning sounded and I decided to head home which was in Leigh Woods on part of the Ashton Court Estate.

Our bus arrived but by this time, flares were dropping all around. This meant nothing to us but a gentleman said 鈥淲e are in for it tonight.鈥� 鈥攈ow right he was.

On reaching Bedminster Down, the bus would not proceed any further, so we were all ushered into a shelter underground. My one and only experience of Air Raid Shelters, was cold, dark and very smelly. We surfaced just after mid-night to find what appeared to be the whole of Bristol alight.

Although a number of miles outside the city, you could still easily read the telephone directory by the light of the fires. We proceeded to walk home down Winterstoke Road and up Rownham Hill all the way on the alert for craters and unexploded bombs. There were ships on the harbour blazing. It looked and smelt like one-hundred bonfire nights rolled into one. If it had not been so tragic it would have been a spectacular sight.

Our cottage was in a field overlooking what was then the Clifton Bridge Station, and is now the Police HQ for dog handlers and mounted police. The stationmaster had a dog, which was never heard to bark in the normal way, before a raid he would set up the most horrible howling noise, and you could be quite certain that within minutes you would hear the sirens of enemy aircraft. I wonder could he hear the German planes sooner than we could, or a siren in the far distance.

From our garden we could see most of Bristol, and on moonlit nights we would watch the bombers fly over, and could see the bombs actually leaving the planes. We had no shelter so if the bombing became too close, I would sit with Mary under the table playing a board game called 鈥淏eat the Blitz鈥�. I believe this was free from the grocers, supplied by the makers of a well-known brand of tinned pears.

On one occasion we had a very heavy fire raid. First, the incendiary bombs rained down. We did not keep sand as we relied on the soil from the garden. On this night everywhere was frozen solid and it was not possible to get a shovel in the earth, My father was out on Home Guard duty, and he always said if they drop incendiaries get them out or H.Es (High Explosives) will follow. What could we do? My mother, never one to be beaten, called me to the back of the house where there was a pile of ashes and said, 鈥淩ight we will both do a wee on this pile, that should do the trick.鈥� Sure enough it did. Next morning the finns of the bombs were sticking out of the ground like mushrooms, dozens of them. The bomb disposal squad came to clear it.

The night Avonmouth Docks was bombed, a friend and I had gone o a village hop at Abbots Leigh, right opposite Avonmouth. When the bombing started in earnest, the dance was cancelled. Our partners were mainly from a bomb disposal unit stationed nearby, and all were ordered back for duty. We got out our bikes and started for home, no lights of course, after a few yards a voice shouted, 鈥淕et off those bikes,鈥� it was a soldier, he insisted we pushed our bikes and walked under the wall.

Suddenly we heard a bomb coming our way, he shouted 鈥淟ie down鈥� and we obeyed. There was a terrific bang and the ground shook. The soldier was quite cross as I got up and said now I鈥檝e laddered my only pair of stockings. As if stockings mattered, but as a silly seventeen year old I suppose they did.

The next day we discovered the bomb was only about fifty yards away from us. It was an extremely large one but it didn鈥檛 explode. What luck, it didn鈥檛 have our names on it as we used to say.

That same night a bomb dropped in a field near to out house and killed a number of sheep. My mother would not buy lamb or mutton for weeks after that.

Another day a plane came out of the clouds and was machine-gunning anything and everybody, including me. I managed to dodge behind a big heavy door out of the way. I understand before that a school playground at Southmead, and a bus in Clifton, was machine-gunned. As far as I can remember no one was injured. The plane came so low, you could see the rear gunner and the markings on the plane.

I was working in Clifton when the Germans tried for the second time to get to Filton aerospace factory, which they had already bombed a couple of days before with disastrous results. A large number of people were killed. However, this time, our fighters we ready for them and drove them back. It was quite exciting to watch the dog-fights. I saw two German aircrew, who baled out, coming down together as though they were hitched up in some way. It seems one landed in a field at Failand and was intercepted by a farmer working on his tractor there.

After all this, I joined the W.A.A.F another story entirely, but not very eventful.

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