"Put that Light Out"
In 1941 I was seventeen years old and earning a living as a radio service engineer in the service department at a local radio shop. There was of course no television in this area only in the London area but due to the possibility of German aircraft being able to use the London television transmitters as navigational beacons the Londoners had no t.v. either! As I wished to learn more about radio servicing I attended evening classes at the Merchant Ventures Technical College, in Unity Street until the bombing raids started and then due to the evening Air raids and unexploded bombs nearby, the classes were held at week-ends, all Saturday afternoons and all day Sundays. I attended two classes Saturday afternoons and on Sunday my class was held between 12 noon and 2.0pm, making dinner time a problem, so that was my weekend routine. Homework from the three classes which I had was often worked on after my teatime at night until the air raids started and then we were lucky if we had any lights as the electricity was more often than not cut off by enemy action.
I lived with my parents at Zetland Road/Cheltenham Road junction in the flat over the then Midland Bank in Cheltenham Road, my parents being the caretakers. There was no air raid shelter, so we had to shelter under the stairs of this four story house!
Of course in those days we had black-out frames which my Father and I made to be fixed to all the windows before it got dark each day. At the rear of the house we had a garden the entrance being in Zetland Road and it is very lucky that none of my family or myself ventured out there when the air raids were on as the swishing sound we often heard was shrapnel dropping from bombs and anti aircraft shells. The shrapnel was steel with jagged edges which were very sharp, each piece being about four inches long by half an inch in each other dimension.
We always carried our civilian gas mask when out, day and night, but when I was on duty with the "Fire Watchers" for our part of Cheltenham Road, I was loaned a steel helmet for the fire watching evening, which helped protect me from items falling such as shrapnel etc. The "Fire Watchers" were something like the Neighbourhood Watch of today, in which we could patrol the area and try and deal with the incendiary bomb fires and hopefully quickly extinguish them. We also attended lectures on the best way to deal with an incident, which later, on one occasion came in very useful.
On a Sunday night raid and I think most Blitzes were on Sunday nights, I was on Fire Watching duty which meant I was out in Cheltenham Road with a handful of other Fire Watchers. A raid came which looked as if it was going to be quite a heavy one. We knew this because we saw flares hanging in the sky, which we called 'Flaming Onions' as they looked like very large illuminated onion shaped lights. The bombs started to scream down on other nearby districts of Bristol, so I decided not to lie in the gutter in the road with the other Firewatchers but to go into a doorway of the local tobacconist and lie there as there was a canvas blind about 5 foot wide fixed around the lower part of the shop window. The doorway I decided would protect me from shrapnel and if the shop's glass window smashed, which I fully expected it to do, at least the glass should slither down inside this canvas screen and not on me. This was quite contrary to all the rules but I decided to give it a go! I am glad I did as the glass did smash when the last of a string of five bombs whistled down from the area of Redland Green and hit the ladies well known shop just across the road from me, which at the time was Morgans, now Maplins. The bomb landed just behind Morgan's public clock and by me lying in the shop doorway I was able to look by putting my head under my arm and saw a huge shower of sparks ascend just behind the clock when the bomb landed. Its an image I shall always remember, it was so vivid and so near. The other Firewatchers came rushing to me from their positions in the gutter to see if I was o.k. I found for a few moments I had no voice, I believe due to the blast, so was unable to assure them all was well. However, fortunately in a short time my voice returned to normal. I learnt since that the bomb had hit a girder on the top floor just behind the clock and detonated immediately instead of going down to ground level, thus doing less damage and possibly saving the lives of all of us Firewatchers!
Life was interrupted with air raid sirens sounding during the daytime as well as at night. As far as I can remember all except two such raids were nuisance raids the aircraft no doubt taking photographs of the City. In order to protect Bristol from such raids the Balloon Barrage would be operated and the balloons would ascend all over Bristol usually followed by the air raid sirens sounding a short time afterwards. On one of these occasions there was the terrible air raid in daylight on the aircraft works at Filton on 25th. September 1940. I remember seeing private cars travelling down Gloucester and Cheltenham Roads with stretchers strapped on to their roofs carrying the wounded to the City hospitals. In general the daylight raids were the enemies reconnaissance flights although they would drop the odd bomb or two in so doing this work before returning to base! On one such daylight raid a bomb dropped just as a double Decker bus turned into Lewins Mead and took the full blast killing many on the bus. When these raids were about to take place the first thing we, the public noticed, was that the BBC radio programmes would fade repeatedly and become very distorted until the sirens sounded when the station would close down altogether.
I also remember clearly the raid, which came on Good Friday night in 1941. After the warning air raid sirens sounded we saw 'Flaming Onions' in the sky. We guessed we were in for a heavy raid and we were not wrong, it was to be one of the heaviest. Mum, Dad and myself, had drawn off several jugs and a bucket of water as per usual before the raid started, so that we would not be left without anything to drink or wash with if the worse came to the worse and the water supply stopped. We then went down stairs and as usual sat under the last flight of stairs. During these raids we would hear terrific explosions which would be caused by our own Anti-Aircraft guns firing, the loudest to us being the Ack Ack Battery at Purdown. Most people I knew called the gun "Purdown Percy" which always shook the windows violently when it was fired. The noise during a Blitz was terrific. I think it would have been about half an hour later we heard a loud hissing sound coming from somewhere up stairs. I thought it must be some escaping mains house gas supply but Dad said no, it is an incendiary bomb and the house is on fire. The three of us then rushed up the stairs, all 51 of them taking the stirrup pump with us. With a bucket of water on the last landing from the top I fixed up the stirrup pump into the bucket and Dad with the hose end rushed ahead up the last 18 stairs to the top, closely followed by yours truly!
The incendiary bomb was burning fiercely away behind the back bedroom's door causing Dad to open the door on to the burning bomb. My Parents had a three section screen immediately behind the door to normally stop any draft as in those days there was no central heating in most homes. This screen was made of wood and covered with a kind of wallpaper, all of which was well ablaze. The screen being behind the bedroom door made it very difficult for Dad to get the hose directed at the fire without twisting awkwardly. Unfortunately this is what he did and later his Doctor found that he had twisted the ligaments of his heart possible at that moment, but this could not be proved of course. From the Firewatching lectures I had attended, I knew it was dangerous to pour water on to an incendiary bomb as the oxygen in the water just fuelled the bomb and would make it burn more fiercely and I am pleased to say that my Dad knew this as well so he concentrated on extinguishing the flames on the fire screen and surroundings. In the meantime, acting on what I had learnt at the lectures we were told to drop the bomb into a bucket of water as with so much water it would extinguish the bomb. To do this I used a broom handle to poke a hole in the ceiling under the bomb having first placed a bucket full of water directly underneath. I am glad to say this action was successful and extinguished the bomb. Dad carried on extinguishing the fire upstairs with the great help of Mum doing all the hard work of pumping the water up to him with the stirrup pump. No mean task as it was much harder work than to pump the water along on the level.
With all that was going on at the time the Blackout still had to be maintained and a very keen Air Raid Warden picked up an ornamental sea shell in the garden and threw it through the only remaining pane of glass in the Bedroom window shouting "Put that light out"! The light of course was the light of the incendiary bomb burning as there was no other light on! We have often laughed about it since.
When the raid finished in the early hours of the morning, possibly 3.30 a.m, or so, we went upstairs to see the damage we had suffered. In my bedroom I found there were holes in the roof and ceiling large enough for a man to climb through and my bed had on it a lot of debris, with large broken lumps of reinforced concrete and bricks cemented together. There was also a part of the reinforced glass sign with half of a large letter S which had come from an Air Raid Shelter behind Burton's the then gentleman's outfitters shop i.e, the first building on the left hand side going up Gloucester Road from Zetland Rd. At the rear of this building there had been a public Air raid Shelter which had been hit by a High Explosive bomb killing many people! This was part of the shelter's sign. My parents bedroom was in a worse state as they had the damage of the fire as well as the bricks and debris from the bombing, making both our bedrooms unusable. We had a very kind Manager who as soon as he heard of the damage invited us to stay at his house in Redland until our house had been made habitable again. This we were very pleased to accept.
This concludes the memories which I always think of when the topic of the Bristol Blitz is mentioned. In June 1942 I was old enough to volunteer for service in the Royal Air Force and they accepted me in that September , but that is another story!
Trevor Dean
Time bomb at Stapleton Road
During the war my family lived at 297,Stapleton Rd. Eastville. During the Blitz we would use the coal cellar in the house as a safe haven during the air raids.
The cellar was cold, damp and dirty, but it had an alcove under the chimney stack which we thought would give us extra protection. As the space was quite small my mother, brother and myself would usually be the ones to use the space when things got rough. Our house was semi-detached and our alcove was similar to one in the attached house.
Our neighbours were two elderly ladies, one of whose husband's had been a builder at one time. On the side of their house was built a very large and high covered area in which they kept a rather vicious Alsation dog. One night during a raid whilst sitting in our alcove, their was an enormous ground shaking disturbance which almost lifted all three of us off of our stools. The dog then started barking very aggresively and continued to do so all night long.
After the all clear sounded we all tried to get some sleep but were awakened by a policeman banging on our front door. He said to my mother,"You'll have to get the family out a bit quick missus as ther is a 500lb. time bomb next door." The bomb had crashed down through the covered area alongside our neighbour's house and the two old ladies and ouselves were totally oblivious to the danger. From our estimation, we were just about dead level with the Lufwaffe's present.
We were just very lucky that German efficiency was not working when they made the bomb as it was disposed of within a few days and our alcove was put to good use on many other occassions.
Graham McGuire
