Waving at the Enemy

This story was submitted to the People`s War site by Alan Magson of York Central Library on behalf of Hilda Brigham and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site`s terms and conditions.

We lived in York near to the River Ouse. I remember what they called the Biedeker raid on York. One night when the raid was on they bombed the river Ouse, and you never had time to get to any shelters and we laid down in a passage in the house and my father had a shop where we lived and he also had a shop opposite and the bomb went through the shop opposite and all the windows were put in. Next to us was the Elephant & Castle pub and all their windows went in too.
Mr. Harton, who had a little shop at the corner of Buckingham Street, was killed in that raid.
After that, on another occassion they bombed the railway station and Mr. Jameison opposite had a son who lived on Leeman Road and he was killed.
One Bank Holiday Monday my sister and I caught a bus to Stamford Bridge, and we were waving to a plane flying overhead and we realised that it had a Swastika on it and we could see the pilot.
When we caught the bus back to York that day they wouldn`t let anyone down Skeldergate where we lived because bombs had been dropped again and all our shop windows had been put in again. We often wondered if the bomber was the airplane we had waved at.
A joke that was told at the time was that the first bombs that were dropped in York everyone said that they`d caught the dead centre of York because they bombed the cemetery.
We used to hear a siren nearly every night usually 3 o`clock in the morning and we didn`t have time to get to the shelters so we ended up in this passage in the house.
You always had your night`s sleep broken and then had to get up again for work in my Father`s bakery the next day.

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