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| Mary and Alan at the Holburne Museum |
This is Mary's Bath Blitz true to life story:
THE BOMBARDMENT OF BATH April 1942
70
years ago I became used to hearing the familiar drone of the
Luftwaffe night after night, heavy with the bombs destined for
Bristol Docks. But on two nights in April 1942 it was our turn, the
city of Bath the target.
The
silvery river Avon guided the pilots of the eighty Dorniers, Junkers
and Heinkels on their four raids. After dropping their first bomb
loads, they returned to France to reload and fly back again. The
want of barrage balloons and anti aircraft guns left our beautiful
city fully exposed under the full moon on both nights.
We
quickly learned to listen for the varying sounds, a whistle meaning
that the bomb wasn't destined for us and the different thuds
signifying the sort of bomb, incendiary bombs, after the flares to
light the targets, followed by high explosives bombs. The second
raid on the first night being mainly high explosive bombs, as fires
were already burning. A local hill was used as a marker, where the
pilots turned their planes to fly in low again and again, dropping
bombs and machine gunning fire fighters and escaping people.
The
men were out in the street, my uncle wearing his A.R.P (Air Raid
Precaution) uniform and my father his Civil Defence uniform and tin
hat. Dad organised the use of the stirrup pumps, sending cyclists
with messages and evacuating people as necessary. The blast from a
bomb in Julian Road, behind our house, blew in the huge windows and
wooden shutters and my brother and I, careered across the floor on
the sofa. Dad had just looked in and a heavy clock fell on his
head, denting his helmet which probably saved his life. We
sheltered under a table in the basement, children in the middle and
the grown ups with bottoms protruding outside the table, causing
amusement. Even then, people could joke. We were joined by an
elderly couple just arrived homeless to escape the bombing in
Southampton, the old man continually leaving the room to find the
toilet. “Like a pea in a colander” his wife remarked, breaking
the tension temporarily. My mother gave sanctuary when she could.
Living with us in the late 1930s was a young Austrian Jewess who
burned a candle constantly for her family left behind. She had been
made to scrub out men's toilets by the Nazis. We also accommodated
Admiralty personnel when they were evacuated from London.
On
the second night of the Blitz, my father came to tell us to run fast
to a Girls' Remand Home half a mile away, in Walcot. St. Andrew's
Church, at the end of our street was alight, (an inferno when I
looked back) and the first six houses were blazing, with fire
spreading rapidly. Our house was number 18. We ran past the
Georgian Assembly Rooms where huge flames, smoke and sparks rose high
in the sky. The heat was intense and we could smell the stored food
cooking and burning inside the building. As we lay in the gutters
to escape the machine gunning, my main thoughts and fears were for my
new bicycle, an advance birthday present! Nearby is a Park and
unknown to me then, the Air Raid Shelter there had received a direct
hit with my best friend inside.
On
the third day, Monday 27th, people left the city for the safety of
the open countryside. There were still amazingly, some jokes and
laughter, an aunt causing much merriment as she climbed over a stile
where the lorry left us.
On
returning to Bath, I saw people carefully digging out bodies under
hanging masonry and listening for survivors trapped below the rubble.
There was heavy dust and soot everywhere and a smell of decay. I'll
never forget that sweet, awful smell. Rescuers tapped and called
whilst we held our breath, listening for any faint answers far below.
There
was no gas and we queued for water from a nearby standpipe, but fresh
eggs arrived from somewhere, eggs in shells, which we boiled on the
fire alongside the kettle. Such a change from dried egg powder.
There
are so many stories. Some of my friends had been 'bombed out'.
Wandering around with one of them, I said I was going home and she
answered that she had no home to go to. Another concrete air raid
shelter was destroyed just at the height of the Blitz when even the
Fire Brigade and A.R.P Wardens had fled there temporarily to escape
the heavy bombardment. Everyone inside was killed. There is now a
Garden of Remembrance there. A friend sheltering under stairs,
told me that her father refused to be intimidated by the Germans and
stayed in the sitting room. Bombs then fell nearby, on The Assembly
Rooms and the Regina Hotel opposite and he was covered in soot from
the chimney, so he shouted for his wife to come out of the cupboard
to clean him up.
Another
friend of mine lived on Bear Flat with his widowed mother and two
older brothers, one of whom, serving in the Air Force, had just been
killed, - his plane shot down. Their house was very badly damaged
and the loss of husband and son and now this, caused the poor mother
to walk the short distance to the river, where she drowned. He
never mentioned the tragedy. I read about it in the local paper.
A
young girl sought shelter in a cupboard on the second night, when a
high explosive bomb caused the house to collapse. She groped around
in the dark until she found a spoon and began to tap. She kept up a
rhythmic knocking for three days until faintly she heard the sound of
pick and shovel. Tapping fast and furiously, she was eventually
brought to the surface. Some trapped people drowned as the water
mains burst.
The
house in which I now live was demolished in the Blitz and rebuilt in
1947. When the inhabitants were dug out days later, only the girl's
feet were hurt, cut on glass, as she had left her bed to run to the
cellar without shoes. Next door, one of the ladies died a few days
after sheltering under the stairs. When schools eventually
re-opened, a friend insisted on clambering about the debris of her
home, in order to find her school uniform which was mandatory !
I
have a picture of an old lady in a long black coat and the obligatory
hat of course, being helped over the large stones and rubble outside
her home. She was 101 years old and told the Mayor, “Hitler
thought he'd frighten me. But he didn't”. It's extraordinary to
think that she had been born in 1841 !
Mary - March 2012