Western Daily Press (Saturday)
GRAN TELLS HOW SHE FLED NAZI BULLETS
TERROR FROM THE SKIES:
SHE may be approaching 90 years old, and she might have been living on the other side of the world for decades, but Jean Davies still remembers one rainy Saturday in Gloucestershire as if it was yesterday.
When she was 10, Jean and her little brother Richard were walking home across a field as a German bomber appeared out of nowhere and started strafing the whole area with bullets.
The pilot had come across the neighbouring army college on their little peninsula of Beachley by chance, and the children had to flee for their lives as he tried to wipe it out.
“We were walking across the field on our way home when the siren went,” recalled Jean, who moved to Australia in 1971.
“We heard a plane, looked up and the plane was right overhead, the guns were firing, and what a noise!
“I had hold of Richard’s hand – we were running – and Richard said he could see the pilot looking down at us.
“We were both crying, and I thought if we could get to the hedge and under it, he wouldn’t be able to see us.”
After sheltering under a hedge until the plane had gone, the pair made it safely back to the farm where the family were living when the Second World War was declared in 1939.
Not everybody was so lucky as Jean and her brother, and 16-yearold Thomas Thornton died after being shot in the raid on the peninsula between the rivers Severn and Wye.
Because the bombing of Bristol was so horrific, the astonishing story of the Beachley raid on the opposite side of the Severn estuary was virtually erased from the history books.
The small community on the border between England and Wales had become accustomed to watching the night sky lit up with search lights and fires as the German planes bombed the oil depots at Avonmouth and Fillocal
We heard a plane, looked up and the plane was right overhead, the guns were firing, and what a noise. I had hold of Richard’s hand - we were running - and Richard said he could see the pilot looking down at us JEAN DAVIES
ton airfield. But a pilot dropping two bombs and strafing an area with bullets in broad daylight on November 9, 1940, was shocking even back then.
Teenager Thomas was an apprentice at the Army Technical School set up to address an acute shortage of skilled tradesmen in the country after the First World War.
It is believed the pilot, flying a plane from the Luftwaffe’s Luftflotte 3, spotted the college by chance while trying to escape fire from a floating battery in the river.
Luckily nobody was in the buildings when he dropped two 1,000lb bombs, which destroyed workshop number 6.
“However, the staff and apprentices were thronging the camp and the plane turned and strafed the area, killing an apprentice tradesman and badly wounding a sergeant,” said
historian Keith Underwood, whose father was an instructor at the camp at the time of the attack.
“Thomas and the others were doing PT at the time so the pilot must have seen the huts and all these lads in their gym kits and come back to get them. When he machine gunned them, my father dived down to try and shield the boy but it was too late. He had already been hit and sadly he died.”
Keith was in nearby army housing with his mother and other relatives on the day it happened.
“It was a horrible, wet day and we saw the plane going overhead and my mother recognised the German markings,” he said.
“When the bombs dropped we thought they were raindrops running down the window panes. Whenever I see rain drops it brings it all back.”
Like Richard, several people have
since said that the plane was so low that they could actually see the pilot as he came in with the machine guns.
To mark the 80th anniversary on November 9 last year, local historian Liz McIvor, 70, tried to find out more about Thomas and his family and came across an anonymous account of what happened written in vivid detail decades later.
The extraordinary first-hand account from the camp said that the men had become accustomed to ignoring the wailing air raid siren, but knew it was serious when the red warning bells started clanging and ran for the shelters.
The account said: “Flying in quite low from the direction of Chepstow, a German Junkers 88 approached the camp with his forward machine guns rat-tatting away and the pilot lining up for a run north to south across the peninsula.
“As the aircraft neared the workshops two 1,000 kilo HE bombs were released.
“One of them exploded just outside the shops, about where the ammunition technicians’ classrooms now stand, while the other passed through the roof of the woodworking department, bounced off the concrete floor and rose again into the air, to sail first through the doorway and then through a wooden hut that stood just outside, and came to rest on the ground not far from the present position of the side door of the education block – luckily still unexploded.
“Meanwhile the Junkers 88 flew on towards the Point, with the rear-gunner getting his turn with a few bursts of fire as they crossed the camp area.”
The account says the injured teenager was carried to the shelter by an instructor, where he died and was later buried with full military honours in the little cemetery near St John’s Church, which is on the military base.
By coincidence, as the coffin was being carried across the main road into the cemetery, a large ministerial car with a police escort came from the Severn ferry and stopped to allow the cortege to pass.
“And out of the car stepped the Home Secretary, Mr Herbert Morrison,” said the writer.
“He moved forward to the front of his party and stood bare-headed, with his famous quiff blowing in the breeze, in silent tribute as App Tdsm Thornton, killed by enemy action while on active service, went to his last resting place.”
Liz, who remembers her mother telling her off for playing on the bomb crater, said her research revealed that Thomas Thornton, who was from Kent, had twin brothers and in 1958 his parents Arthur and Frances emigrated to New Zealand, where they lived until they died.
Jean emigrated to Australia where she now lives with her husband, four children, ten grandchildren and ten great grandchildren. Her brother Richard died in Chepstow last year.
But she still remembers the time she had to run across a field as the bullets rained down, on a day that struck fear into the heart of a Gloucestershire village for a long time to come.
“Dad was a member of the Home Guard, and owned a double-barrel gun,” said Jean, who recalls hiding in the bomb shelters and under tables when the planes went overhead using the Bristol Channel to guide them.
“He would be up the garden, ready to shoot anyone who bailed out of a plane.
“Quite funny when you think about it now, but he was serious.”
Thomas Arthur Thornton, 16, son of Arthur and Frances Thornton, is buried in War Grave number 7 at Beachley Military Cemetery.
Bristol was bombed heavily between June 1940 and May 1944. The longest period of regular bombing, known as the Bristol Blitz, began at around 6pm on Sunday, November 24, 1940 and finished in April 1941.
Dad was a member of the Home Guard, and owned a double-barrell gun. He would be up the garden, ready to shoot anyone who bailed out of a plane. Quite funny when you think about it now, but he was serious JEAN DAVIES