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This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Anastasia Travers from CSV Action Desk on behalf of Betty Harris and has been added to the site with her permission. Betty Harris fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I remember going down to the shelter under St Luke’s Church on the Bristol Road, we used to look forward to Cadbury’s bringing us the chocolate drinks. This one night some of us were lucky enough to get a bunk bed, if not we lay on the big billiard table to sleep. Above the table was a trap door in case we had an emergency. This night there was a bad air raid, we were all lying there and all of a sudden there was a big bang and the trap door burst open; there’d been a direct hit on St Luke’s School next to the church. Our parents gathered us all together as we had to get out of the shelter. When we came up we looked back towards town and it was just like a big sunrise.

We dashed along Bristol Road to try to find another shelter, which we found on the corner of Belgrave Road and Sherlock Street. It was very full already but we managed to squeeze in and it was very frightening, there were so many people all in one place. I remember my mum saying how will we get out of here, but we did. There was another shock to come. We lived facing St Luke’s Church and our house was up an entry between two shops, we couldn’t get up there because there was a live bomb stuck in between the shops. We had to go to Five Ways where there was a big hall which belonged to the railway. There were a lot of people so I remember we all had to lie on the floor to sleep for three days and nights until they found mum another house.

It’s not till you get older that you wonder how your parents coped, most nights we went to bed partly dressed so we could get to the shelters quickly.

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