Memories of the Southampton Blitz

I was about seven at the time. I remember the summer and into autumn of 1940. I lived in College St, Southampton which was between Orchard Lane and Canal Walk, right in the heart of Southampton.

We often had daylight raids some times false alarms. We used to go to an air raid shelter in a basement of Sinclairs Music Shop which was on the corner of College Street and Canal Walk.

I remember it was late summer because my dad was still alive but he was very ill and he died on September 14 aged only 44. That left my mum with four children aged between three and eight years old. My brother was evacuated to my aunts in Wiltshire where he spent the rest of the war. My sisters and myself stayed at home. On the nights of the Blitz in the last two weeks of November we were indoors when the air raid siren sounded.

We didn’t leave the house as we would have done, instead we all sat under the stairs. We could hear the sound of the bombs and the anti-aircraft guns going off outside. My Granddad came around. He tried to persuade my mum to leave the house but she didn’t want to. She was very low after my dad had died. She said: “I’m stopping here with the kids and if we’re bombed we’ll all go together.” Eventually we did leave the house to go to my Granddad’s in Orchard Lane; it seemed everywhere was ablaze.

My Granddad lived in a house which was once a pub. The cellar was reinforced with scaffolding and turned into an air raid shelter.

The next morning we walked home. Most of one side of College Street and the surrounding area had been destroyed including our house. There were people digging through the rubble. They thought we had been buried there as we didn’t go to our normal shelter so people thought we were still in the house.

F SEVIER, Bitterne