大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War site by Christine Gibbons for Kent Libraries & Archives and Canterbury City Council Museums on behalf of Joy Mary Bower-smith and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My maiden name was Joy Snelling. We lived in North End in Portsmouth throughout the war. My fathers office was just outside the dockyard on the Hard.
For the first few weeks it seemed like a phoney war. The first thing was the sinking of the Royal Oak in Scapa Flow.
During the war various precautions were taken in the city. For example, surface air raid shelters were contstructed in the streets for passers by. Tanks were placed in some streets blocking the street from pavement to pavement and filled with water. These were to supply the fire engines when fighting fire, usually started by incendiary bombs. Headlights on cars were partly blocked out, many windows had strips of paper crossing them to prevent them splintering when blown out. Sometimes used small portable machines to send up a nasty black smokescreen to hide the city from bombers. They sometimes moved the anti-aircraft guns to confuse the enemy.
My father had a shelter dug in the garden, but being below sea level it soon filled with water. I spend the evening of my 13th birthday in October 1939 trying to bail it out to no avail. So it was filled in we had another shelter built of granite containing bunk beds in which we spent many nights during air raids.
The first raid was a daylight raid in June 1940. During that raid a first aid post in a school near us was bombed and a number of people were killed. Then the first aid post was moved to a school immediately behind our garden and remained during the war and we used to hear the cars and ambulances going out during raids to deal with casualties. My dearest friend's father was killed on 10th June. He was the engineering officer aboad HMS Boadicia. It was bombed and a bomb went down the funnel of the ship and exploded on the boiler. He was killed along with several ratings. The ship was bought back to Portsmouth and they were buried in Hasler Naval Cemetary.
The first blitz was on the 10th January 1941 lasting all night. Our church building and a number of other church building together with whole areas of the city were devestated. I remember the next morning going along our road to the main London road and people were trecking out of the city with posessions on prams to get out of the city because of the risk of more air raids. There were hosepipes trailing in the gutters. It was absolute chaos. Because it was the premier naval port the loss of any Naval ship was felt deeply, and particulary I remember the day the news the sinking of HMS Hood was known. She was a Portsmouth ship and I remember a sense of grief hanging like a pall over the city. Lists of casualties were displayed on noticeboards outside police stations.
There was another blitz on the 10th March 1941.
In April 1941 there was a land mine raid. I was due to start at Purbrook Park County High School. When I arrived there were several hundred firemen at the school. They had been fighting the fires in the city. After a few days many of them left but for the whole of the rest of that summer term there were about 200 billeted on the school.
In 1942 bombs were dropped and one landed about a hundred yards away. When I left our shelter and went inside for a drink I found ceilings on the floor, window shutters blown off, windows blown out and part of the roof gone. Temporary repairs were done so we could contine to live in the house. The air was full of debris for a long time and I went out into the road and first aid attendents came along and questioned me carefully to see if I was alright and said don't go along the road because a body was lying there.
In August 1942 I went to London. On the journey I saw soldiers exhausted lying on the platforms. They had survived the Dieppe raid. I stayed at Abbey Wood in London and the Duke of Kent, brother of King George V1 was killed in an air crash in Caithness. Killed with him was the husband of a cousin of mine. They's only be married 10 months.
My brother Gordon had joined the RAF in 1940. He was sent abroad. At the time we did not know where he was going. It was to India via the Cape of Good Hope because the Meditteranean was too dangerous.
One Sunday many aircraft were seen heading east. We wondered what was happening and then heard about the battle at Arnheim.
After leaving school I did a full secretarial course and then worked at the Ministry of Labour as a temporary civil servant. I had to register myself for war work, but I was not called up because the war ended before I was called for service. The law at that time was that everybody had to go through the Ministry of Labour to take a job, so we were very busy. Raids continued day and night through these years.
As preparations were being made for D-Day, at night you could hear the movement of military traffic outside the city. One one occasion I went with a boyfriend for a walk in the country and it was just one huge Army camp. A lot of the Mulberry harbour was constructed at Spithead (they were nicknamed spuds by the Army).
The V1s were falling on London and the Southeast but we only had one or two in Portsmouth. Fortunately for us the launching ramps, which were nearly ready for use, were captured by the allies.
On Sunday 6th May 1945 the announcement was made in our church that on the declaration of the cessation of hostilities in Europe there would be a thanksgiving service in the evening. We knew that peace was about to be declared. So on the 8th May we all joined together for a service. Afterwards, together with a lot of the other young people in the church went out on the town. There was just such relief that the fighting was over and that there would be no more air raids. It was a great joy when my brother arrived home just before Christmas 1945 aboad troopship SS Pasteur. It docked at Southampton and my father and I were permitted to go the dockside. We were the only visitors apart from a civic party and band welcoming returning prisoners of war from Japanese camps. Amongst all the troops my brother saw us and got permission to disembark. The Chief Customs Officer had offered my father his office so that we could spend some time with Gordon. He then had to go on to Kirby in Lancashire to disembark!

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