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Articles
Alfred and Martha Abbott
 "A
BOMB CHANGED MY LIFE" by Rhys Griffiths
When Iris Jess
was living in Dover during the Second World War she had no idea
of the battles that were raging around the globe. While most
children her age had been evacuated from Hellfire Corner, this
seven-year-old was not at school, and she enjoyed long days
playing with her friends Donald and David Clark.
But one night
the calm of her childhood was shattered by a German bomb which
destroyed her family home in Priory Gate Road. Now 72, Iris, of
Kitchener Road, Dover, still has vivid memories of the night of
April 3, 1942.
 She
said, "I can remember sitting in the cupboard under the stairs
with my mum and Aunt Elsie, my dad and my Aunt Nancy were just
stood in the doorway. My grandfather was an ARP warden and he
had just come into the house to check that we were all right.
When the house collapsed, my mum just told me to shout, and it
was Donald and David's dad who pulled us out. I can still
remember being lifted out, but that's about all."
The explosion
which destroyed the house killed Iris's grandparents Alfred and
Martha Abbott, and it left her family homeless.
Before the
bombing, Iris had enjoyed a carefree childhood. She was not
aware of the war and had only had one day at
 school
before evacuation was ordered. When the order was given to
evacuate the town's schoolchildren, Iris' grandmother had
insisted that she stay in Dover so the family could remain
together.
Iris was free to
play her favourite game with her friends, which was emptying out
sandbags and building sandcastles. Iris said, "We were free to
do as we liked. We had a whale of a time. I don't think we knew
what was going on. Having not been to school we just didn't miss
it."
Those early
years of the war did not seem out of the ordinary for Iris. She
had not known anything different. When the war ended and life
began slowly to return to normal, there were lots of things that
were new to her. She said, "I remember seeing a banana for the
first time. When my mum went to peel it I thought she had broken
it."
This article first appeared in the Dover
Express, p10, 21 June March 2007 - reproduced with permission
Notes:
Mrs Jess was the seven-year-old child pulled out from the
understairs cupboard, mentioned by Roy Humphreys in his book
"Dover at War, 1939-1945". We met her when she telephoned after
having seen a picture of her bombed house in the newspaper in
another article.
Illustrations:
Mrs Jess as a child, courtesy Mrs Jess
Her home in Priory Gate after the bombing, courtesy Dover Museum
Mrs Jess by the grave of her grandparents, in Charlton Cemetery,
Dover, photo Simon Chambers
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