Molly Owen-School days and the night they razed Bristol City Centre

This story has been inputted by a BBC Radio Bristol Peoples War Volunteer.

“There’s a piece.” “I’ve found another.” “Gosh! Look at the size of this piece!”
These were the shouts from a group of children playing the game, which had become one of their favourite pastimes, ‘collecting shrapnel’.

Among the group was a fair haired little girl called Molly, she was ten and a half years old and was on her way to school, with the others, at Victoria Park school, having moved to the area from another part of Bedminster, but she had in that time made a lot of friends. Molly had by now grown used to the school and the surrounding area, but life had now taken on a different tone, sometimes frightening and sometimes exciting, sometimes a mixture of both.

It had all begun one Sunday morning in September 1939 when the Prime Minister had announced over the wireless that Britain was now at war with Germany.

Molly knew there was something very unpleasant about war, she had heard the grown ups talking about the possibilities of this happening and now her mother’s tears as this announcement was made alarmed her. For a while however the war was something very distant from Molly, a thing she heard about on the wireless. Then one afternoon she was playing with her friends in the far corner of the school playground, where there was a wall and a high fence separating the boy’s playground from the girl’s playground, when a loud wailing sound hushed the laughter and shouts of the children. It was the air raid siren.

The children had heard this sound quite often of late and by now were well drilled in what they should do on hearing it. They ran to the centre of the playground and lined up in their classes, and filed down the slope into the air raid shelter which had been built under the school playground. This drill had been practiced many times and had been fun, but today was something different, this was not a practice, this was the first air raid. Soon the throb of aeroplane engines could be heard faintly and the children were very quiet and frightened in the dimlit shelter and wondered whether they were German planes or British. Then the noise faded into the distance and after a while the sound of the siren filled the air again only this time it stayed on one note, not the up and down sound of the first one. This was the ‘All Clear’ which told the children it was time to come up from their underground refuge.

Very little work was done in school that afternoon and the children were sent home early and warned not to dawdle on the way.

Since that day there had been more ‘air raids’ some in the day but most of them at night and unlike the first air raid a few bombs had been dropped and the sound of the anti-aircraft guns could be heard firing at the enemy planes caught in the beams of the searchlights, which swept the skies searching for the intruders.

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Often now the German planes could be heard almost before the shrill call of the siren had faded away, and Molly could now quite easily distinguish the sound of the German engines from those of the British planes. (Like many other people, Molly’s mother had brought mattresses down from the beds and laid them on the dining-room floor, and on occasions Molly slept in her clothes as it was necessary to move very quickly to the air raid shelter when the sirens sounded).

A new building had appeared in Molly’s garden and indeed many other gardens. It was a corrugated iron structure with a rounded roof, half below ground, half above, it was an air raid shelter. Molly and her mother and father and youngest brother (her older brother was away in the army) had at first taken refuge here during the air raids, but were now sharing the next door neighbour’s shelter, partly because the shelter at the top of Molly’s garden was often inches deep in water, and partly because the lady next door was very nervous and liked to have company, apart from her cat ‘Sandy’, when her husband was taking his turn, with other neighbours, as a ‘firewatcher’. Indeed the lady was so nervous that often she was knocking on the window telling Molly and her family to get to the shelter before the alarm had been raised.

By now all Molly’s best friends at school had left Bristol, and had gone to stay in the country with people who had offered to take the children into their homes. Molly would have gone with them, but she had developed German measles and was unable to go. She was originally going to be evacuated to Canada, but a ship carrying children had been attacked by the enemy, and it was considered too dangerous to risk sending any more.

Sunday, November 24th arrived and the day was spent in the usual way helping her mother in the house and playing with some of the children who lived near her. They did not go far from home, as it was better to be near home if the siren sounded even though there were public shelters in some of the streets. They did however go down to the park, chiefly to have a look at the Barrage balloon which was moored there. They enjoyed watching it being inflated, that big, fat, silver monster with three big ears at one end, that looked as if it would burst at any moment.

Soon Molly and the others felt hungry and decided it was time to go home and have some tea and listen to ‘Larry the Lamb’ on children’s hour.

Tea over, Molly settled down to listen to the wireless and do a jigsaw puzzle. She had nearly finished the puzzle and was thinking of settling down on the mattress, when the siren sent its wailing notes through the air. Quickly Molly fetched her coat, grabbed a story book and the latest addition to her wardrobe, a gas mask and hurried out of the door and up the garden path to the shelter. She settled down in her little arm chair and started top read by the light of a torch. Sandy the cat lay curled in her lap. Soon the distant sound of engines could be heard with their menacing “I’m coming. I’m coming” drone. Tonight they sounded stronger, more powerful. The searchlights were frantically scanning the skies and then Big Bertha (based at Frenchay) started bombarding the planes, with other

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anti-aircraft guns joining in, all eager to have their go at the planes. There were shells bursting all around and still the planes came on, and then the sounds of objects whistling through the air followed by the terrific explosions as they hit the ground announced the bombers’ arrival over the city to unload their deadly cargo.

The tension in the small confused air raid shelter was high and this time “I went to the grocer’s and bought something beginning with the letter B” would not ease it as it had on previous occasions.

The noise outside had reached a crescendo and then gradually faded away. The tension was eased a little and people could be heard calling to one another “Are you alright?” “Yes, thank you.” “Its going to be a bad one tonight” and then “Here they come again, get back in that shelter.” “Get that light out.”

Once more the thundering roar of the engines could be heard and once more the guns took aim, pounding away at these menacing monsters who were bent on destroying the city. Again the whistling noises and explosions, as one after another the came hurtling down, then the calm as the planes left.

Finally, after what seemed many hours, the ‘All Clear’ sounded and the weary people emerged from their holes in the ground to see what damage had been done.

Molly and her family came out of their shelter, and from the hill where they lived, looked across to the centre of the city. The horizon was illuminated by a bright red glow which extended far into the sky. A strangely beautiful sight, which all too clearly told what had happened that night.

There were many more raids after that night and many bombs fell much nearer to Molly’s home. There were plenty of mornings on which she and her friends could collect shrapnel.

But the night of Sunday, November 24th, 1940, was the night the heart of the City of Bristol was rased to the ground and many of her ancient buildings were gone for ever.

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