What happened to exeter during World War 2?

Answer 1

Being bombed out inExeter.
I was evacuated to family friends in Exeter when my grandfather thought that the bombing in Stratford, East London, was getting too heavy (he was licensee of the Builders Arms, Stratford, at the time). My memories are not very full after all this time but I do remember that I went to the family friends who were running a public house just over the road from the side of the cathedral, going to a school held in a large house and most of all being bombed out on the night of the big air raid. I had been asleep upstairs in the very top of the pub when I was awakened along with others by one of the staff, a black man, whose name I cannot recall. We were escorted down stairs and out of the building into the back yard, an area that may have well have been a stables area or something similar. All the family were there and we went under the large archway and turned right into the road. Every building was alight, windows were bursting in the heat. We walked down the centre of the road to distance our selves as much as possible from the heat of the fires on both sides of the road but being careful to walk around the burning incendiary bombs that were dotted right down the middle of the road just like white road markings. I, being small, we seemed to walk for ever but eventually found refuge beside a large water tank made of what seemed to be corrugated metal, (I think they were called static water tanks). I remember it being quite shiny so I presume it was new and had been put there with the intention of being used for fire fighting purposes. We sheltered close to it for the rest of the night on the soil. When we returned to the pub the following day all that was left standing was a small section of an outhouse. I also recall being fed in what I imagine was a type of soup kitchen, part of the meal being potatoes, boiled in a bucket, in their jackets, they tasted awful. My abiding memory of that night is of the fires all around, absolutely everything in flames and the utter devastation the following day. I regret I have yet to return to Exeter but perhaps I will, I would like to see how the area was reconstructed, assuming that is that I could identify the actual place where the pub stood. I have no knowledge of the family I was evacuated to other than that their name was Banks and they had son somewhere around my own age and a young baby. Post Script:- Total damage to the Builders Arms during the war ONE broken window amongst all that bombing, incredible. I was born April 1937.