An ordinary man
This is a true story, retold as best I can remember from when it was told to me.
I was in our local Somerset hospital in the mid-late 80s, about a half-hour drive from the fair city of Bristol, and got chatting to the chap in the next bed. I was in my mid thirties and he was in his mid-seventies. It transpired due to pure coincidence, he was the father of the paramedic who had driven me to hospital in an ambulance, although that is not relevant to this story.
At some point over the couple of days we were bed-neighbours, he told me that he had been a fireman during WW2, based in the Somerset town of Bridgewater some forty miles from Bristol. Like manty cities in the UK, Bristol was targeted several times during the Blitz.
One night a raid started on a Friday evening with German aircraft initially dropping flares and incendiary markers on the city. Local fire crews attended and began to do battle. The raid continued with the bomber stream repeatedly aiming for a residential part of the city, hoping to kill or demoralise local manufactory workers and disrupt aircraft production.
As the raid intensified, fire crews from outlying city districts were first put on standby, then later were pulled in to the city centre. Fire boats were used in the docks as pumping stations when water mains were disrupted, with miles of temporary pipelines being run to feed the fire engines at the core.
Fire crews in the nearby towns were put on standby, and eventually pulled in to help as the raids continued, with the knock-on effect of fire stations from outlying towns and villages put on standby, and pushing crews and engines forward to replace crews and engines that had in turn already been pulled in from the edge of the city.
This continued over the whole weekend. Come the morning, the fires still raged, and more manpower was pulled in. On the Saturday night, the bombers came again. Crews and engines were pulled in from farther and farther afield.
My bed-neighbour moved up-country, a town at a time, a fire station of a time. Come Sunday morn, he was on the edge of the city. Come Sunday night, he was in the thick of it, as were fire crews from as far as way Exeter, eighty miles away.
That night, the fire crews finally managed to get the inferno under control. On the Monday morning, they were damping down and beginning to pack up.
Homes and businesses had been destroyed, and people had died. People appeared from their basements, or from under their reinforced dining tables, or from the cupboards under their reinforced stairs. From air raid shelters, and their Anderson Shelters. From their untouched homes, or from the rubble of their destroyed houses.
Then they went to work, or the shops, or their friends, or their family, or to where they hoped their work and shops and friends and family would still be.
… and as they went, they left gifts on the fire pumps. Despite rationing and depravation, the locals gave what they could.
A single egg, a cheese sandwich, a single slice of bread, a single slice of ham, wrapped in waxed paper. As people walked by the fire engines, the small pile of gifts got larger, and larger.
The local people who had little or nothing, and who had lost much, gave to the men who had given their all.
