Wartime Diary

My great aunt Elsie Selina Burrell worked for Cunard in Bristol during WW2, travelling daily from Eastville into the city. This week I came into possession of some diaries she kept at the time.

The diaries are a mix of personal trivia and wider news, recorded often without much emotion. She mentions the Bristol Blitz several times; at one point her office had lost its roof and she worked under a tarpaulin, everything still soaking from the fire hoses. She spent hours in cupboards and in shelters. Traumatised refugees sought shelter in her local chapel, and she mentions washing the hair of a woman dragged from a bombed building.

I don't think we, in the modern world, can really imagine how life was then. The worst of the blitz was in the middle of winter and the bombing at its worst at night. Elsie records with relief the few quiet and undisturbed nights.

Here's a page from her list of air raids, showing the 24th November 1940, the first Great Blitz.

In 1940, Elsie recorded 643 hours of raids. More pages can be seen here: Elsie's diary 1940

I'm planning on including more extracts from Elsie's diaries in the future