Children of the Blitz

THEIR innocent faces look out from a photograph.

Class 7A of Central District Girls' School in Southampton proudly pose for this picture before the horror of war shattered their world.

For they were among the children working inside an arts school at the Civic Centre complex when German bombers approached.

Nazi Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering had observed how the complex - which housed a new art gallery recently opened by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester - had looked like a cake from the air.

Chillingly, he vowed to "cut himself a slice".

When his bombers attacked on November 6, 1940, children were busy inside the School of Art, which was situated on the corner of the new art gallery block.

Fifteen children, including some from the local orphanage in King's Park Road, were pupils of the Central District Girls' School and aged 11 to 13.

The Central youngsters had only been attending for two weeks and an afternoon needle and thread session was in progress.

At 2.45pm, 12 bombs fell from the sky. One dropped directly on the School of Art, penetrating the roof and smashing through two floors. It obliterated the classrooms and exploded in a basement shelter, where the Central youngsters and teachers were hiding.

It was the first time the children had been to the shelter, which was a basement area lined with central heating pipes and not properly prepared.

Fourteen children from Central were killed. A further 21 died in and around the Civic Centre complex.

Many of the Central youngsters were badly disfigured from the blast or crushed by debris.

Others were burned after the central heating pipes exploded.

Just one child from Central, 13-year-old Audrey Hunt, survived the shelter horror, as she described below, in her own words.

The November 6 raid was merely a warm up to a catastrophe which was about to unfold in Southampton. A huge raid followed on November 23 before the "Blitz Weekend" was endured on November 30/December 1.

In total, official figures showed 631 people were killed during Southampton's Blitz ordeal, and more than 2,000 injured. However, historians believe the figures were much higher.

I WAS 13, one of the oldest girls and about to leave Central.

I was living in Northbrook Road at the time and had been attending the school since I was five.

On that terrible day I remember the sirens sounding and suddenly we were all going down steps to a basement area. We had never been down there before and we just followed the teachers.

We had only been in there a few moments and then it all happened.

I was in the corner of the room and barely had time to sit down. I recall that a teacher was standing in front of me when suddenly there was a big thud.

I looked up and saw the sky above. There was noise and screaming all around me. Just total chaos and confusion.

Next, soldiers (I later learnt they were Canadians) appeared and formed a barrier to hold back a wall which was going to collapse.

I must have been screaming to alert the rescuers because the first aiders came across to free me. A doctor then gave me an injection and I was taken to South Hants Hospital.

I remember I kept asking my parents where the other girls were and they told me they were in other wards. In fact only three others were alive at that point but they sadly passed away in hospital.

They said it was shock that killed them which is probably true because my injuries were actually worse than theirs. In fact, I had acted as a shield because they had ended up underneath me.

I had bad burns to my face and legs and I distinctly remember having saline baths, which didn't hurt at all because the nerves in my legs were damaged.

An Army officer who came to look at me said he would just give it another weekend before deciding whether I needed plastic surgery. He came back on the Monday and saw that my legs had started to heal on their own so surgery wasn't necessary.

I was in hospital for four months in the end and afterwards I had awful nightmares about what happened down there. I often think about my friend Pamela Blackford who died. Her parents owned the Northumberland Hotel in Southampton and on that day she stayed behind at home to listen to the singer Leslie Hutchinson on the radio.

Pamela ended up being late and she ran as fast as she could to get to the art school. If she hadn't bothered she would be alive today.

As for me, even now I wonder how on earth I was the only one to get out alive.

AUDREY HUNT.

Audrey's Hunt's poignant story, and that of 80 Blitz survivors, is told in the best-selling and definitive account of the war years, Southampton's Children of the Blitz, by Daily Echo feature's editor Andrew Bissell, which has been reprinted and is available in all good bookshops or direct from publisher Red Post Books on 01202 511517.