大象传媒

EVAPORATED TO DULCOTE !

Violet Jackson, Patricia Jackson, Agnes Jennings, Robert Jackson

Bristol and Dulcote

I was five when the Second World War broke out. One day I went to school and nearly all my class were carrying their pillowcases, with their clothes and a few toys, not forgetting the gas mask. They also wore their name on their coats. They were off to Temple Meads Station for a train to Devon. They were being evacuated. I was really sad, as there were only a few of us left.

When I was seven years old there was the Good Friday bombing over Bristol. We lived in Marksbury Road at the time opposite the Gasometers. One of them had a direct hit and we had gas,water and mud up to our windowsills. Luckily we were not in the shelter that night. My mum and I were visiting friends in Headley. Dad was an ARP warden, he found a baby that had been washed from its mothers arms when the Gasometer was hit.

While we were staying in Headley a lady who lived a few doors away asked me why I wasn鈥檛 being evacuated. I said that mum wanted to see people I would be staying with. The lady said she had a relation in Dulcote near Wells and her husband was going in the army and she would be on her own. I thought it would be a great idea, so I ran home to mum and told her that I had got myself evaporated! So we all went to see the lady at Dulcote and there I was evaporated!

One of the first letters mum wrote was to say that she had been called up for munitions and she was making tanks at Cathedral garage and the war would soon be over. At the time it only had tarpaulin over the roof. I stayed with auntie for three years.

I came home for a week when it was quiet and while I was out with mum a bomb fell in the next street, mum pushed me under the hedge while all the debris fell around us. I cried that I wanted to go back to the aunties.

I was back with at aunties and playing in the fields with my friends when I heard a German plane go over. I called to them saying it was a German plane and they just laughed and said that they didn鈥檛 come this way. Anyhow it crashed in a nearby field but I don鈥檛 know the outcome.

I lived with auntie for three years and I had a lovely time. We kept in touch, but there is nothing like being at home with your mum and dad. Pray nothing like this happens again.

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