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This story was submitted by a volunteer on behalf of Dolores E Powell, by her request, and kind permission, and Dolores fully understands the house rules. This is an adaptation of her books: Lest We Forget, and Rough Hewn and Tender Pride.

Rough Hewn and Tender Pride, Fishponds, Bristol During 1939-1940

The phrase ‘Peace in Our Time' was repeated with a certain cynicism. People were suspicious and wary. My parents began to read the papers avidly and studied particularly small maps that were printed on the front pages of the local Evening Post. My father would take me aside and show me the map and explain; ‘Do you see that shape; it’s called the Polish Corridor. It’s an important piece of land because it leads to the sea and if Hitler marches through Poland and claims the Polish Corridor, then England will declare war on Germany’.

I loved looking at the maps and listening to my father’s explanations. I understood only partially, but even as a seven year old child I sensed the importance. It seemed there was a general feeling of suspense and anxiety everywhere. That anxiety was well founded for greater sorrows and hardships were to supersede all financial worries. Those that were to come would engulf the whole world.

On September 3rd, 1939, one Sunday morning, I sensed another significant day. My mother and I were in the kitchen and she switched on the wireless. Mr Chamberlain was speaking.

‘Shush!’’ said my mother. ‘Listen!’

Mr Chamberlain then uttered the words I shall never forget:

‘I am speaking to you from 10 Downing Street…this country is at war with Germany’.

‘My God!’ said my mother as she held me close. I looked up into her face; her eyes were filled with tears. Peace had ended and the Second World War had begun, and I was not quite seven years old.

What did it all mean? What was going to happen?

Building the Anderson

When the war began the ties with my paternal grandparents strengthened. The family had carved out an underground air raid shelter in the rear yard. We were to spend many nights there.

It seemed like a vast place to me and was extremely warm and dry, giving a feeling of total safety. It felt almost animal-like having to climb into the small hole above ground to descend into the burrow of security.

Past mining experiences must surely have been drawn upon, and certainly my father’s navvy skills, to construct such a shelter. It was dug very deeply as we had to climb down a very long ladder before reaching the floor and adults had plenty of headroom and could walk around freely. The roof and sides of the shelter were supported by large pillars and rafters of rough hewn wood. It was long and wide and contained two tiers of bunks across and along the sides. Attempts were made to curtain off these for added warmth and privacy.

At the lower end of the shelter we kept a full water butt, a Calor gas cylinder for boiling water for tea or making cocoa. There was also a white enamel bucket with a smooth wire and wooden handle and lots of extra sandbags. Tucked away in the corners were small stores of tinned food such corned beef, dried eggs, dried milk and cocoa.

During raids of long duration my Gran and aunts would sit and knit squares, scarves and socks ‘for the war effort’ for ‘our Tommies’ to wear. We children would sit and listen to the conversations or read comics like the Beano and Dandy until tired out when we would make our way to the bunks to go to sleep. We would lay our heads on handmade feather-filled pillows and snuggle between the coarse grey ‘war’ blankets. The soft flickering flame and comforting smell of the oil lamp which hung from a tick rafter would lull us into a deep sleep, oblivious to the dangers overhead.

Then there were the times, when sleep evaded us when the raids above ground enticed us to watch. We could only gaze and listen in awe as we observed blinding flashes of gunfire lighting up the night sky, falling flares and searchlights sweeping across the sky, while the sounds of bombs and aircraft seemed terrifyingly near. On rare occasions we would climb the ladder until sheltering behind a wall of sandbags, we could witness a ‘dogfight’ in the illuminated night sky. We would crouch in fearful apprehension as an enemy plane would be hunted down by one of our own planes and forced into the blinding glare of the searchlights. Finally, we would unite in a tribal yell of victory as the hunted plane came under a barrage of gunfire and spiral towards the horizon in a column of flames and smoke.

“That’s another Jerry down’ my Grampy would say and I suspect his thoughts would go back to the 1914-18 War when he lost a very dear brother, and would feel vindicated.

In retrospect, and with the hindsight of added years, I think of those deaths in the sky that I so innocently watched as a child. How inhuman it all seems now; and how well I remember my grandmother’s words: “That’s someone’s father, son or brother’ she would say. She, more that anyone must have known what it was to experience such grief, having lost her own first husband going ‘over the top’ at so early an age.

It has been said that sorrows are given to those who can best bravely bear them. In the few years that were to follow, she was to lose one of the sons of that first husband in Northern France and a son-in-law at Dunkirk.

Bizarre Souvenirs

Her words became particularly meaningful to me later, when one day my father came home from work and proceeded to place on our living room table at Hillfields, in Fishponds, some tragic ‘souvenir’ obtained from the wreckage of a German plane. The plane had been brought down over Stapleton not far from the estate where we lived. Evidently, my father (who was a navvy for the Council) had been repairing the wall of a local psychiatric hospital when the plane was shot down. He and others managed to collect certain pieces from the wreckage. The pilot, he told us, was a young German lad.

To my mother’s horror, he placed on the table a blood-stained German flying helmet and a heavy leather glove. There were also pieces of the plane, shrapnel and cartridge shells. Faced with such concrete evidence we knew that the war had reached us and was indeed very real. My Mum repeated what my Grandmother had said, almost word-for-word; ‘My God Tom, that was someone’s husband, father, brother or son’. She cried and so did I.

Later, when I was alone, I took the blood-stained glove and smoothed it gently, feeling a deep and very real sorrow. Perhaps he had a family like our, I prayed. ‘Please God, put an end to this war’.

Sometime later I learned that on September 27th, 1940, a German Messerschmidt 110 fighter bomber crashed near Manor Park Hospital in Fishponds. The pilot was only 26 years of age and named Oberfeldwebel Hans Tiepell. Also there was a Gunner, aged 20 years, Unteroffizier Bresiq from Bresan. They died instantly and are both buried at Greenbank Cemetery, in Bristol.

Many years later while researching this book, I read an article in the Bristol Evening Post in which a request for information about this plane was made by the pilot’s family who, after all these years, wanted to know more about the circumstances of his death. At that time I could not bring myself to relate the story, but if they should ever read this I would like them to know that somewhere in England at that time was young mother and child who loathed its consequences, who wept, and prayed, and felt a very real sorrow at that young man’s death.

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