大象传媒

鈥淭his story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer, Anita Howard from Essex Action Desk CSV on behalf of Betty Morris and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.鈥�

Dad went hoppity hop,Broomfield, CHELMSFORD.

We lived in a bungalow in Broomfield, Chelmsford, Essex. My bedroom was used as the shelter room. Extra timber was put into the rafters to give extra strength above. At the window was a bookcase filled with books so the room was very dark. Also in my room was a Morrison shelter like a giant steel reinforced table. It was bigger than a double bed and lined with steel mesh sides. It was in a corner of the room and had a mattress inside.
In my room there was also a single bed for me. Over the door was a thick curtain to stop any intruding gas!! There was also a spare mattress under my bed. When the sirens went my parents shouted to me so I rolled under the bed onto the mattress beneath and went back to sleep.
If it was very noisy with guns and bombs my parents would come into my room and crawl into the Morrison shelter and pull over the wire mesh. Mum was very upset because our Labrador dog wasn鈥檛 allowed into the Morrison shelter although she came into the room. When we heard a stick of bombs from the South East we held our breath. Boom, boom, boom, BOOM! Louder and louder. Sometimes they dropped on the nearby railway line. Chelmsford was a fair target.
I was 17 in January 1945 when a rocket dropped diagonally on Patching Hall Lane. There was a huge bang.
I worked in the office at Marconi House in New Street, four storeys high on the top floor so I could see Broomfield and a tall column of black smoke rising from our area. I didn鈥檛 know what to do so I ran down to my Dad in the instrument shop on the bottom floor. He couldn鈥檛 vacate the building quickly as he needed a gate pass so he told me to cycle home to check if mum was O.K.
Part of me was terrified as I cycled home but I was also very curious to see what had happened. When I arrived Mum was sitting in the kitchen having a cup of tea with a friend.
鈥淲hat are you doing, home from work?鈥�
Oh, she was cross with my dad for sending me on my own. Fortunately there was no immediate damage, just a few damaged tiles. Nalla Gardens was the nearest hit to us.

In December 1944, Hoffmann鈥檚 factory (Rectory Lane) which made ball bearings was bombed killing about 30 night workers, mainly girls. There is a special memorial for them in the cemetery. Marconis, Hoffmans, the railway line and the river were all potential targets near to each other.

Barrage balloons were anchored to the ground to prevent enemy aircraft getting too low. When they broke loose they made a terrible racket. Sometimes the cable trailed knocking off roof slates and pulling down telegraph wires. They rolled around doing acrobatics in the air.
One landed four doors away outside our neighbour鈥檚 French window. It seemed as if it was trying to break into the house. They were huge things. Sometimes they were struck by lightning during a storm and caught fire so when a storm was imminent it was a race to get them down. Really they were more bother than they were worth.

During one blast my father was in the garden and we heard a peculiar noise. We peered round the back door and it was dad. He had been crippled in World War 1 so when he ran he hobbled making a strange sound 鈥� hoppity hop, hoppity hop. His boots were specially made as one leg was shorter than the other. The explosion had also caused his trouser legs to flap making a swishing noise. It seemed funny to us at the time!

Betty Morris Chelmsford 2005

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