By Charles Reeves, Bleadon
I would like to recall the time some 80 years ago when my grandfather, Charles Drury, saved all our family from a German bomb that destroyed our residence of East Lynch, Ebdon Road, Worle, in the early hours of Sunday 28 June 1942. It was my grandfather who had heard the bomber overhead and, as there was no air raid warning, he stressed that we should get up in case it was bombing our area.
I was aged 8 and my brother Graham aged six. We were awakened from our beds, together with our parents, my grandmother, and an aunt and uncle who were staying with us. We got up quickly and got dressed, little clothing, as it was midsummer and a full moon. We got downstairs and got in under the stairs cupboard, which was renowned to be the safest place in the event of a bomb destruction of houses which did not have air raid shelters.
My grandfather and uncle had gone out of the house and were some way down the driveway when the bomb exploded on the side of the house. The blast demolished three quarters of the house and left us surviving in the under-stairs cupboard. Unfortunately, my grandfather was killed and my uncle injured by the blast and flying shrapnel, which also killed our horse in the adjoining paddock. My father (Lot Reeves) was buried under the kitchen table with a wall on top. With his calling, my mother (Felicia) dug him out. In the meantime, my grandmother (Kate Drury) guided my brother and myself as we clambered over the rubble to escape up into the garden at the back of the house and hid under an elder bush.
But the German bomber, which had dropped three bombs in a line, the second did not go off in Mr. Cainey’s market garden, now Cherrywood Road/Rise, and the third exploded in the Square of Worle, just where Lloyds Bank is now built, weighing some 400Kg each. It then came back over, dropping flares and machine gunning us all. The evidence is shown by a bullet hole in the signpost at the Nut Tree pub junction of Ebdon Road to this day, and as survivors, the destruction left us with little clothes and possessions.
Further raids in the following nights were in Weston-super-Mare. We ourselves stayed in lodgings for the next three months at the home of Percy Bartlett and his family at Glendale, Ebdon Road, observing the red glow of the burning down of Lance & Lance, corner of High and Waterloo Streets. Without my grandfather’s observation of this invader overhead, we would have all been killed and I would not be telling this story, eighty years on. I am now the only survivor of this event.
And while at Glendale, we all had our bit to help with the local farming work and remember working in the cornfield of Tripp’s Brother family, where the Ebdon Road Crematorium is now situated, and finding an unexploded German incendiary bomb, all shiny and without any fins on it. We, some London evacuees, who with us helped to take it apart to look what was inside, and it was reassembled. As we left the cornfield and it was getting dark, the dairyman, Kon Bunn, tossed it up to land in the road junction and it exploded and hopped two or three times before burning with great ferocity. We all threw handfuls of earth on to put out the flames and smoke because of the blackout, and two local policemen came up on their bikes to see what was going on and left after an explanation of the incident.
We then set up home in 44 and 46 New Bristol Road, where my parents lived for the rest of their lives. Soon after moving to our new home, we witnessed the taking up of the rail lines of the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Light Railway, which were used for the war effort. I remember my mother saying that while attending Bridgwater Fair on a Wednesday, as livestock was there on that first day, a very large formation of German bombers and fighter escorts flew over very high and all glittering in the sunshine, the fighters buzzing around the group and destined for a target further afield. If they had known that all those people were gathered at the fair and dropped some of their bomb load on that area, it would have been a great loss of lives from Somerset.
Also, New Bristol Road was a stopping place for American Army convoys heading down to Weston and later to the South Devon embarkation ports for D-Day. We used to meet the Yanks and say, “got any gum, chum,” and the most generous soldiers were the coloured personnel, as they would give us cookie tins and fudge. As we used to play soldiers in the adjoining fields, we would stalk the local Home Guard and annoy them, as we were giving their position away to the other troops during their manoeuvres. We even had our own tin hats and wooden guns.
