BOMBERS OVER BATH AND HIGHBRIDGE.

BOMBERS OVER BATH AND HIGHBRIDGE

On the night of April 25th.1942 when the German planes dropped bombs on Bath my family was living at No. 102, Lower Oldfield Park. The house belonged to Alderman Hunt who owned sweet and tobacconist shops in Bath. He lived there with his wife and daughter Winifred who was the head mistress of East Twerton Infants School. Dad worked for the Admiralty and the citizens of Bath had been asked to take in civil servants as lodgers for a guinea a week. He was one of those 'guinea pigs'.
Mum, my older sister, Daphne and I had remained in Worcester but Dad asked if we could move down to occupy a couple of spare rooms in the Hunts' house. On the first night of the bombing we were all under the stairs or perhaps in the cellar. There were shelves of empty honey jars as Alderman Hunt was a bee-keeper. These came crashing down as the house shook. A house nearbye where Dr. MacQuistan, a local GP lived, received a direct hit and the German planes flew low along streets to use cannons on the upper storey rooms.
I was nearly three and Daphne was five so we didn't understand what was happening. The next day there was glass everywhere and we packed up and moved up to Whiteway to share the home of the Pople family,from Birmingham. Tom Pople worked with Dad. When the warning sirens sounded on the second night we all quickly pulled on warm clothing and joined other families in the fields where we spent much of the night under the stars.
Mum had grown up in East Huntspill, a village in Somerset and had old school friends there who found us somewhere to live. We lodged in Kidner's farmhouse while our furniture was stored in a cow shed. Daphne and I attended the village school even though I was only three. I suppose it was because it was war time. Dad had been moved to London and spent most weekends looking for somewhere for us all to live together. Fortunately he swapped jobs with a Londoner who had been posted to Bath. He could then return to work in Bath at the Empire Hotel, the Royal School, Foxhill and other places. He had a new landlady in Ringwood Road, Oldfield Park who gave him spam sandwiches every day. Sometimes he toasted them on the office fire to vary the flavour a bit.
By 1944, Mum, Daphne and I had moved to Isleport House in Highbridge, a market town between East Huntspill and Burnham-on-Sea. The house belonged to Mrs. Watts and her daughter Joan. There was an Amunition Dump Camp at the end of the lane, run by American soldiers who were very friendly and introduced us to chewing gum. Dad came down from Bath to visit us at weekends if he could, but travelling was difficult with the blackout and an irregular train service, so he often walked part of the way. He was also serving in the Home Guard in Bath.
He did manage to come home for a weekend in late March, 1944 because Mum was expecting a baby which was due about then. Daphne and I were trying to sleep in our attic bedroom. She was excited because the next day was her seventh birthday, but there was such a terrible noise going on in the sky that night. Dad came in with a lighted candle - we had no electricity - and pulled back the curtain to reveal German bombers once again flying over and dropping incendiary bombs on the house and orchard. He told us it was a thunder storm and we joined the rest of the household under the stairs. Daphne remembers Dad stamping on flames which kept appearing in the glass conservatory and I remember the back door bell continually ringing until Dad pulled the wires out to stop it. The next morning there were many unexploded incendiary bombs in the orchard and one which had gone through the roof of our attic bedroom. We were allowed to sit on the ottoman in the hall and watch the firemen drag their hoses through the house to the attic. The only other fire was at the hay and corn merchants in the town. My younger sister, Claire had been born in the night, a wonderful birthday surprise for Daphne. While the hole in the roof was being mended we were 'evacuated' back to friends in East Huntspill where they already had an evacuee from London so we slept on a mattress on the floor. Were the german bombers really following us around or aiming for the American Ammunition camp or just unloading surplus bombs before returning to Germany ?
We returned to Bath in 1945 in time for the VJ Day celebrations in Oldfield Park. We were given temporary accommodation in Upper Oldfield Park in a house belonging to Dickinsons, the Bath Jewellers. In 1948 we moved in to a newly built house on the Moorlands estate.
In 1949, when I was ten, a free holiday in North France was offered by the Mayor of Lille to children who had been 'bombed out' or suffered as a result of the blitz We travelled courtesy of the 'Help for Children Fund'. Our party was led by Mr. Guerrier, a master at the City of Bath Boys' School. We set off from Bath Railway Station, wearing our green identity labels and joined similar groups from major cities like London, Birmingham, Exeter and Sheffield. We spent the night in a London air raid shelter where tube trains ran above us. After the ferry from Dover to Calais we rode in a train with wooden slatted seats to Lille where we were collected by our French host families. For me there was a rattly journey on a packed tram before arriving in Halluin, a town on the Belgium border. I remember being extremely homesick. Jocelyne Tiers, the daughter of the family and I played together though neither of us understood the other's language. As Madame Tiers kept a wine shop or small pub, I did learn to say, " Qu'est ce que vous buvez, Monsieur?", to the elderly male customers who played a game resembling 'shove halfpenny'.
Thirty five years later I returned to Halluin, found the Tiers' house and now exchange Christmas and holiday cards with Jocelyne.
I should be interested to know if anyone else remembers the Highbridge 'bombing' on the 27/28 th. March 1944.
WW II touched our lives and we were so lucky to survive and all be together at the end of it.

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