Parents Suffered Too: A Wartime Tale from Bristol

In November 1940 I was 14. I had been admitted to Bristol General Hospital to have a metal needle removed from beneath my kneecap. This was the month the Luftwaffe began its night campaign on the city. On the first occasion we were all left in the wards. Nursing staff were as disturebed as much as the patients. The hospital was on the Feeder canal into which the River Avon had been diverted years before. A particulkr problem was the fact that the hospital was amongst dockside warehouses and some small naval vessel building was being carried out along the river. Obviouily legitimate targets were all around us. We, the resident patients, were naturally discouraged by the necessary admission of bomb casualties, usually of a minor nature, but looking horrific because bomb-shattered glass tended to split into very tiny splinters, so that a man could be admitted with a face covered in blood, who, when cleaned up, had really very minor injuries. Nevertheless, to a 14 year old away from home, this was not reassuring, especially as, after removal of the needle, my leg was strapped up in a cradle with a weight, (to restore length of the leg, I suppose,) and I wasn't really mobile.

I'm not sure if it was the next or an immediately subsequent raid which tested my mobility to the full. For some reason known to the authorities a few of us had been moved to a new ward several floors up only that morning. The raid that night was on the riverside buildings obviously. Each bomber discharged its bombs in such a way that any one on the ground was aware of the "stick" approaching. The nurse's station was in the centre of the ward, lighted at night by a shaded bulb on a pulley system, so that the duty nurse could lower it to concentrate on what she was studying withour disturbing the patients. This particular "stick" was approaching us. I was aware of, and wondered at, the weighted light descending slowly to smash the bulb on the glass-topped desk, plunging the ward into darkness. At the same moment, without noticeable sound, the large windows, protected by wire screens and light weight removable blackout, disappeared and glass spread itself across the ward. I suppose we all then heard the explosion of the bomb somewhere outside. Those that could were straight out of bed. I was helped to rid myself of the weight and then down the stairs to the basement, which was equipped as some sort of shelter. There everyone spent the rest of a sleeples night. I believe wooden nurses' quarters on the roof had been destroyed by incendiaries and many wards obviously could not be immediately used. Presumably arrangements were being made during the remainder of the night to evacuate us all to neighbouring hospitals. I and another slightly older fellow were sent to an orthopaedic hospital in rural north Somerset, but most other patients were sent to Bath.

In the morning my Father went to work as usual in the increasingly damaged city centre and was told that "The General had been bombed". His first reaction was that the local GPO was the damaged site and it was some time before he realised it was the hospital. Enquiries led my parents to be told I was in Bath, where they duly went at the weekend to visit - only to be told I was not there. Eventually I was located, and we were reunited.

This story is only told to try to show how parents must have suffered when for any reason, evacuation or otherwise, they were parted from their children during periods when air raids were prevalent. It was not only the children who suffered from the parting.

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