大象传媒

THE BRISTOL BLITZ-
THE DAY THAT CHANGED MY LIFE

Sunday September 3rd 1939

My name was Freda Audrey and I was 3 weeks from my 11th birthday. I lived at 22 Hengrove Avenue, Knowle, Bristol with my Father Fredrick FRANCIS aged 39 years my Mother Blodwen aged 41 years and my two sisters, Joyce aged 17 and Brenda aged 14 years.
When war was declared at 11 am my Mother cried. It was many years later that I realised that she had lived through WWI and could remember the devastation this war had caused.
I attended Knowle Park Junior Mixed School. I was in Class 9. The teachers name was Miss D. Williams, the Head Teacher was Mr H.W.W. Ashworth. As there were not enough air raid shelters for all the pupils, we attended school for only half a day, mornings one week and afternoons the next but we always had homework to complete.
There were dustbins attached to lampposts in the streets for food scraps for the local pig farmers. My friend Barbara Belcher and I would go for a cycle ride and when possible fill our saddle bags with acorns and put them in the pig bin.
Sunday 24th November 1940
My Mother and Joyce went to the evening service at the Congregational Church in Broad Walk, Knowle. Brenda and I stayed at home. (My Father was working away at a munitions factory.) When the air raid sirens sounded the congregation were offered the use of the shelter beneath the Church but as Brenda and I were at home my Mother and Joyce accompanied by Joyce鈥檚 boyfriend, Peter Huguet, who lived in Broad Walk decided to return home. By the time they arrived many incendiary bombs were raining down and the trees were festooned with light. We put out the fires in our garden and went to the cupboard under the stairs to shelter. Many bombs whistled over our house making it shake like a jelly. We did not hear the bomb that landed in our back garden blowing our house to pieces. There had always been a clock on the mantelpiece (I believe it had been a wedding present to my parents.) I can never remember it working. When everything had quietened down, the first thing I heard was the clock continuously striking. Many neighbours came to rescue us and as we were brought out of the rubble we were taken to different houses. I repeatedly asked after my Mother and was told she had been taken to a neighbouring house. When the 鈥淎ll Clear鈥� sounded I was taken out into the street possessing only the filthy clothes I stood up in and only one shoe. I was told my Mother had been killed. A few weeks before I had dreamt that I did not have any shoes to wear and when I told my Mother of my dream she said 鈥淎s long as I am alive, you will always have a pair of shoes to wear鈥�. My dream had come true. Peter took the three of us to his home until the funeral and then I went to live in Pontypridd, South Wales with my Mothers sister. I had not been there very long when my aunt had a serious stroke so another aunt, who had been a widow for many years came to look after the household and us. I lived in Wales for two years and when the bombing in Bristol had almost ceased I came back to live with my father and his second wife. I lived there until the war ended.
Joyce had joined the WRNS as did Brenda and I when we were both old enough.
When I was older, I realised what a wonderful Mother she had been who taught her three daughters by her excellent example.

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