St Helier to Hill Court

Hitler was out to get me. He missed me in Jersey - the bombers arrived as I left with my parents on the last mailboat to get away - and in Southampton, which was being bombed as we arrived: the boat anchored out to sea until the raid was over. My father had begun work at the Bristol Aircraft Company in Filton so that is where we went, living as emigres with whomever would take us in, then similarly in Thornbury. Failing to get me in his heavy raids over and around Filton, Hitler actually got a JU86 machine-gunner to chase me along the Southmead Road on one occasion. When my mother rented a house in a tiny village on the Somerset Levels a returning raider emptied his bomb-bay so close that she gave up and went back to Thornbury with me. They had missed me up till then and I stayed lucky but during the night raids I never once slept in a bed for a whole year. After a spell as a postman/telegram-boy I found myself working in the BBC Music Library which had been evacuated from London to Hill Court, a country mansion at Hill, near Shepperdine on the banks of the Severn. Here I packed parcels of music for studios all over the country until, Jersey liberated at last, my parents and I could go home again. Hitler had missed me, but Jersey was never to be the same again - now I am a happy Wiltshire Moonraker!

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