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Bombs and Bombers
Considering its close proximity to both Bristol and the decoy (a replica of Bristol designed to attract enemy bombs) built on top of the nearby Mendip Hills, Wrington can consider itself fortunate that it did not suffer more from falling bombs and enemy planes. However, there were one or two very close calls, as described by Olive Mellett………….
“ My scariest moment was when there was a raid over Bristol. We were living then at the top end of King’s Road. I was in bed and mum and dad were sleeping downstairs. Dad did Home Guard duty a couple of nights a week and was then up early for milking. I woke up and heard this terrible noise. I had Ann in bed with me in the double bed at the back. I pulled the curtain back and there was this blazing plane looking for all the world as if it was coming for the window. I shouted, “Oh, my God, there’s a plane coming down.” Dad said, “Go to sleep, you can’t stop it.” So I can remember putting myself over Ann and hugging her. Then there was the thud as it landed in the next but one field and the whole place shook. Bits were splattered all over our gardens and everywhere. Other nights they used to drop these little firebombs and everybody was out putting them out. Father used to shout to us to go to sleep, as he had to get up in the morning. We weren’t allowed to be scared!”
............ and Ken Schroeder:
“ There was a plane came down by Black Bridge, which is on the west side of the old railway station. A lone plane came over and dropped some incendiaries which fell on the lawn in front of Webbsbrook House – my father used a stirrup pump on those. The crew of that plane bailed out and were captured by people at Congresbury. My brother was in the Home Guard at the time, before he went into the air force and he and his friend Gordon picked up their rifles and went down there.”
The plane concerned was a Heinkel 111 of StabsSt/KG27, bound for Liverpool. As Ken says, four of the crew were captured near the Bell Inn at Congresbury, the fifth being taken near the Star Inn at nearby Rodyate Hill.
A then ten-year old Gladys Brough remembers that when the plane crashed, the local boys, together with her next door her neighbour Gordon, rushed down to the field to see what souvenirs they could grab before soldiers arrived to guard the site. It was not a good idea to have a hoard of villagers clambering all over a burning aircraft, perhaps with unexploded ordnance aboard.
Trixie Kirk, a young mother at the time, can provide even more detail of the event, such was the impression it made:
“ We had a plane down just a couple of fields up here. My husband was out. We were down in Station Road and we had stairs that you could get under. I knew this was a terrible raid we had on so I put my son Rex in the pram and got under the stairs. All at once this swishing noise came right over our houses and it landed just up there – only a couple of fields away, in what they used to call the cowslip field. It crashed and how it missed the church, I don’t know, because it must have come right by there. There were no bombs on it so we were lucky really.”
The crew bailed out and came down at Congresbury, only slightly injured from their landing. They went to a house on the main road, where the inhabitants took them in and fed them before handing them over to the police.
Some weren’t so lucky with the bombs. Trixie’s cousin and husband, who ran the New Inn at Lulsgate [now the Airport Tavern] suffered a direct hit and were both killed.
There were also a few bombs dropped on the edges of Wrington itself. Ken Schroeder, who at this time was running a milk round as well as working on the farm, told me about some of them:
“ There was a blast bomb that pitched on Yeoman’s lawn. I was on the milk round that morning and went up through there – I knew there’d been damage in the village and I remember seeing that hole – about a couple of yards square and hardly any depth to it at all. It did very little damage to Yeoman’s itself, but it hit the roof off of the house behind it. The blast went down through the drive, followed the road down and hit Amor’s big window out.
There were also two 500 pound bombs dropped opposite Littler’s [also on Roper’s Lane] side by side. I’ll tell you what actually happened there. I was an ARP messenger at that time and went up straight away. Next morning on the milk round I went up to Littler’s. There were three old ladies lived in there during the war and this lifted up a rock, threw it right up in the air and down into their kitchen. |
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Whenever those ladies used to hear the air raid warning, they would stand by their Aga cooker in the kitchen. But on this occasion they didn’t have time to come down.
Tom Bush measured the stone and reckoned it weighed about half a ton. The only time I was frightened during the war was when I woke up during the night and heard those two 500 pounders coming down. The noise of them was dreadful. It was so loud that you thought it would come down on you.
Opposite Littler’s there is now a new house. There used to be a line of sheds along there that belonged to Mrs. Bell the Doctor’s wife. In there she also had a hen, sitting in one of the cattle mangers. The bomb blew the roof off and that hen stayed on there. I knew she was there and went in there the next day to see her and she was still sat on the eggs, with all the timbers, rafters and tiles all around her. She stayed there and hatched her eggs. It must have been terrifying for her.
After I’d done my milk round Mr. Hardwick, the farmer, asked me to go and clean out the dew pond. I went up there and as I got up in the lane I saw a streamer across the lane and wondered why it was there. I just ducked under it and went on up with the shovel. All of sudden I heard somebody say, “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” |
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I looked round and saw a Sergeant in the REME there. I told him I had come to clean out the dew pond. He said “Don’t you realise there’s a stick of unexploded fire bombs in that next field – didn’t you see that streamer?” I said “Yes, but there wasn’t any sign saying anything.” I was only about 15 then and I had a job to do. There was quite a few dropped up in that area because there was a decoy up there on Fry’s Warren, to save Bristol, like they did up on the Mendips.
On one occasion one plane was being chased by a Beaufighter, so it dropped some of its bombs to lose some weight.
Also, at the top of Wrington Hill a 1000-pound land mine was dropped. Just a couple of seconds earlier and that would probably have dropped straight in the middle of Wrington. We had to take one night on the farm each week on fire watch.
This one particular night there was a ewe lambing in the top pen – we had a lot of fowl pens and in the top one we had this ewe. We knew she was going to lamb soon and we brought her from the fields further up. So Mr. Hardwick said 'take the lantern and go and see if that ewe's lambed up there.' I said, |
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