大象传媒

Entered on behalf Shirley Jeanne Bridger (Glanville) (DOB: 8/7/1932)
All this took place at Widley, 9/10 miles north Portsmouth.

It was January 10th 1941, we used to have visitors come out to us from Portsmouth to escape the bombing. This particular evening we were playing monopoly, which was the new game of the time. During the evening the lights went out, which wasn鈥檛 unusual at the time, so we continued by candlelight. During the evening we stopped for supper, and my Grandfather and aunt, went out into the garden to see if they could see a reason for the lights going out. When they looked towards Portsmouth which had Portsdown Hill in between us, the sky was just one mass of flames and orange light. This did indicate that there had been a very big bombing raid in Portsmouth, although we didn鈥檛 hear the sirens where we were.

The next morning my mother went into Portsmouth, because she worked in commercial road at the Landport Drapery Bazaar, now Alders, and the whole of commercial road was flattened, and the Guildhall was hit, and it was the first very large bombing raid on Portsmouth.

During an air raid one night the siren had sounded and of course we had all gathered in the shelter, we hadn鈥檛 been in there very long when an aircraft came down very low machine gunning something. When we looked out all the bungalows and houses had their blackout in place but the bungalow opposite the shelter had light showing through the air vent, and so the pilot was able to locate the buildings and having machine gunned our houses flew off.
It didn鈥檛 matter how small the pin prick of light was, it could be seen and used as a target.

Coming home from school at lunchtime, which we always did as we didn鈥檛 have lunch provided in those days, the siren sounded and a lady on the way home called out to me that I should come into her shelter. I didn鈥檛 give a thought that my mother might be worried, and the lady offered me a dish of trifle which I enjoyed and when the all clear sounded I then made my way home for my lunch.
Every time I pass that house it always brings back that memory.

We had a landmine dropped at Crookhorn, there was an ack-ack station which was obviously a place they were trying to destroy it left a very large crater. The odd thing was that all the soil had changed to a deep red, possibly where the soil had burnt from bomb. Later in that area we put a war camp for Polish internees, like a displacement camp. After the war a lot of these people then integrated into the community, very often by marriage to local girls.

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