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No-one
who has experienced air attack during a blitz can ever forget it.
Looking back, the provision of civilian protection seems woefully
inadequate. Defences ranged from hastily-built brick and concrete
shelters in the streets to instructions to sit under the stairs and
brace oneself against the gas meter. There were Morrison shelters, there
were Anderson shelters, there were air-raid wardens with tin hats and
whistles, there were sirens on the church towers and a considerable
amount of bravery but nothing alters the fact that thousands of ordinary
people, ranging from the elderly to the new-born, lived under the threat
of attack from the air for five years.
What you remember are the sounds - the planes came in low and the
throb of their engines overhead was unmistakeable. The preliminary was the shouting and banging as
the wardens ran round trying to get the elderly out of their homes - no
time to argue with the obstinate or rouse heavy sleepers - and then
that terrible whistling sound as land-mines, incendiaries and bombs
began to fall. Running to the street shelter, calling out to each other,
children sleepy and crying, not able to keep up as their parents ran, and even when the
shelter was reached, no real sense of safety - dull thuds, explosions
making the sky bright and the scene crystal clear - and then the smell -
burning and smoke everywhere. Not a once in a lifetime experience but
something that filled the childhoods of a generation who carried a gas
mask to school everyday for years and who nightly faced the strains and
tension of war. |
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John
"Harry" Stidever lived (and died) at 39 Station Road in the
Ford district of Devonport. Sadly for
him, the targets on the night of 25 April 1941 included the Royal Naval
Barracks nearby, and the station called Dockyard Halt, equally close to
his house and strategically important in connection with
troop movements and weapons supply to the adjacent naval Dockyard.
There was a public air raid shelter a short walk away in the Park but a lot of people preferred to stay in their own homes
during raids. Maybe they didn't like running through the streets in
their nightclothes or the crowded, smelly dankness of the shelters or
maybe they were determined not to let Hitler turn them out of their
homes. It didn't make much difference either way - several street
shelters received direct hits and the Anderson shelter dug into the
garden and Morrison shelter in the living room could be just as lethal
so, often, people just got up, dressed themselves and waited for the
outcome.
Harry - together with the other 400 victims of the April 1941 raids -
was buried at a mass funeral in the Efford Cemetary at Plymouth
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Members
of the public visiting a recently re-discovered public air raid
shelter in Devonport.
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| © Steve Johnson |
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Back
to Issue 7 |
