Thread: The War Years
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Old 9th February 2019, 15:48
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Dorothy
We were staying in Bristol the weekend of the Blitz. We had been to the Downs for a walk in the afternoon and I think the sirens went about 6pm that was the first raid. We had a brick shelter built into the bank of the garden. We had the bunks in there and we felt we were quite comfortable compared to Anderson shelters. We had a very good view of the Blitz – it was very dramatic because we lived on top of St Michael’s Hill looking right down into the city. My dad was out there on the front waving his fist at the planes. Not that it did any good but I guess that’s what he felt like doing.
Jeanette
I wasn’t scared during the Blitz. We just watched Bristol burning the whole city was red. We lived on a bit of a hill and we could hear it crackling and burning. When Castle Street was bombed, just the walls were left standing.
Peter S
My grandmother lived in Fairfield Street looking over the railway. We were all gathered in one of her rooms with an uncle who was in the RAF. When the bombs started to fall we just sat there but my RAF uncle dived under the table every time a bomb dropped because that’s what he’d been trained to do. There was a Butler’s oil depot near the station about 300 yards from us. They stored barrels of oil. It was wonderful as a kid to watch these drums explode. They were like giant Roman Candles, flying into the air and down again.
Ray
I came home one Easter in 1941 for a weekend leave and we had a big Blitz on Bristol. I lived down at Easton where we had a land mine dropped in a little narrow street called John Street, which was cobbled. My house was about a quarter of a mile from John Street and one of these cobbles came through the roof and landed on my bed. They bombed the bus depot at the back of Berkeley Street, Croydon Street, and Easton Road. They also had the railway there going up to the Midlands and down to South Wales. A land mine dropped on the Friday night (the Good Friday Blitz) and I spent my Saturday helping people trying to crawl out from under the rubble - we pulled about three out. It was our duty in the forces to help out the Civil Defense when we were home. All the windows were blown out and we had an unexploded bomb. I spent the weekend in the Church Hall.
Jeanette
I lived off Redland Road and there was a house there that was bombed right at the beginning, bombed, and then burnt out. From that day until years after the war it was still standing. There was bedroom furniture and curtains hanging out the window. The curtains used to blow in the wind. There was a lovely dressing table in the window but no one dared go and take anything because it was only one wall.
Ray
I remember they were machine-gunning the barrage balloons. The barrage balloons were there to keep the enemy planes up so the hope was they’d miss their target. They never had the sights they’ve got now where they lock on like, they had to manually drop the bombs. They had a field day bringing all the barrage balloons down, they were just machine gunning them. It was a moonlit night and I could see the bombers coming over. I remember a double-decker bus landing on the on the vicarage roof.
Jeanette
The biggest land mine dropped on the Downs was right by the ‘White Tree’. It made a crater big enough for six double-deckers to go in. We kept going up for months to see it. All the houses were blown by it. It was on that piece of grass between the ‘White Tree’ and those big houses.
Black out
Peter L
You had to whitewash the curbstone outside your house so you wouldn’t trip over it. You also had to paint your number on the house and keep a bucket of sand or water underneath it for putting out incendiary bombs. It was very difficult going out in the dark because we couldn’t use a torch and there weren’t any batteries anyway. We had to have the torch shielded. Motor vehicles had to have the top half of the headlights covered as well.
Tony
We were all issued with small phosphorescent discs that we stuck on our lapels so you could see people coming towards you in the dark.
Esme
There were no railings round the water so people fell in the docks.
Tony
There was a man called Roach used to make his living from fishing bodies out of the dock. 5/- for a person and 10/- shillings for a cow.
Fire Watching
Esme
most buildings had their own firewatchers. Each business had a rotate for their employees. It was voluntary you did a days work and then had fire watching duty in the night.
Betty
I was working in an insurance office in the center of town. We had to do fire watching duty once a week so we stayed at the office over night. We slept on the top floor - two women and one man in camp beds. We were able to hear the rats running about because the building was old. The Ack, Ack gun was in the center just a few yards from where we worked. I remember one occasion running around with the shrapnel pinging off our helmets. We still had to be at work the next morning. Soon as it was daylight we could go home and have something to eat but we still had to be back to work by nine.
Tony
There was a firewatcher’s station opposite Electricity House in Colston Avenue. Anyone unfit for military duty was encouraged to be a firewatcher or go into the Home guard.
Mabel
Some people were responsible for certain roads. It could be hard for the men who’d done hard days work and then had to go on duty over night.
Peter L
We were sheltering at a neighbor’s house under the floor when an incendiary came through upstairs. They were trying to put it out when the bucket fell over, the water came through the floorboards, and we all got soaked.
Esme
We spent hours under the stairs with a candle. It was the safest place in the house.
Tony
My dad was a firewatcher in Clifton. After one raid he came home with a mini tea chest banded with metal and made out of plywood. A warehouse had been bombed and when they went in they swept all the tea and sugar up and took it home.
Mabel
There wasn’t anything about the Blitz in the papers. The day after the big Blitz in Bristol I was taking my daughter into town to be photographed at Jerome’s in Castle Street. We got the little bus that went into town and it went a funny way round. When we got there I got off the bus and looked round and there was nothing there except smoke and rubble. Everything was down. Nobody had told us what had happened – it wasn’t on the radio or anything.
Terry
After the blitz you didn’t see buildings entirely flattened. What you would see were three or four walls down. It would be in a dangerous condition. It was all temporary buildings in the center.
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