AT just five years old, for Geoffrey Serle the night of November 24, 1940, must have seemed like the end of the world. Little more than a toddler, he found himself caught up at the dead centre of one of the grisliest nights of the Bristol Blitz.
Just weeks after his family's home in Westbury-on-Trym had been destroyed in an earlier Luftwaffe raid, this night would see the destruction of the family business – "hat, cap and hosiery" shop Yeoman, Serle & Co, which had been trading on Castle Street since 1890.
But for Geoffrey, it is the sight of the bombed-out Dutch House that is most deeply scorched on his memory.
The 75-year-old, who now lives in Kingswood, would go on to enjoy a career in the RAF himself, before getting his "big break" into the world of television, as a newscaster with HTV throughout the 1970s.
But for Geoffrey – cousin of That's Life co-presenter Chris Serle – that fateful night in 1940 has been playing on his mind in recent weeks, following calls for the rebuilding of the Dutch House as a project for apprentices in traditional construction techniques.
"I think it's a marvellous idea," Geoffrey says. "It would resurrect an iconic Bristol building, breathe new life into a corner of Bristol that never fully recovered from the Blitz, and would give young apprentices the opportunity to work on a major project.
"Even though I was only five when the building was destroyed, I remember it clearly, given that it stood just around the corner from my family's shop. The ornate timber architecture of the building was in such stark contrast with the modern buildings around it, to a young child it was really quite a striking sight."
So it's little wonder that as he emerged from his hiding place following the devastating bombing raid, he was stunned to look up High Street and see the building in tatters.
"It had all started as such a normal, peaceful sort of Sunday," he recalls. "I'd been to church with my father as usual – our family church was St Stephen's, just off Corn Street, and my father and I had made our way down High Street and were heading towards Bristol Bridge when the flares started dropping out of the sky.
"I remember looking up and thinking they were fireworks. As a five-year-old I was excited to see them. But these fireworks didn't explode, they just kept burning red and floating down towards the city.
"My father said they were not fireworks, but flares – they were being dropped on parachutes to light up the city for the German bombers.
"We ran away from the city centre, but had only reached Bristol Bridge when the first bombs – incendiary bombs – started to fall around us. We climbed down on to a pontoon that was then beneath the first arch of the bridge, and we sheltered there for the next five hours, while the bombing took place all around us.
"It was the most devastating noise imaginable. Even as a child, I was terrified – it's hard to imagine what must have been going through my father's mind – who knew better than me the tremendous danger we were in.
"We were the only people sheltering beneath the arch of the bridge, but we didn't want to risk leaving the relative safety of the arch to try to get to an air raid shelter."
When Geoffrey and his father eventually emerged from their hiding place, to the sound of the "all clear" siren, they were met with a different world.
"Everything had gone," Geoffrey says. "All the shops and pubs and even some of the city centre churches had been almost entirely destroyed around us.
"I was just locked in a stunned silence, trying to take the whole thing in. I remember clearly the acrid smell, and the heat from the burning buildings on my face.
"We could see that the family shop was destroyed – the entire street was in ruins. Then as we walked back up High Street, I looked up and saw the Dutch House in pieces. A surprising amount of the timber framework was still standing, but it was clear that the historic building was now just a fragment of its former self."
It was just one memory from a childhood in which war was a constant backdrop.
"War was just what happened," he says. "That's how it seemed to me then. My parents talked about the First World War as if it was only yesterday, so war had always been there. We had lost so much when our house was destroyed in September 1940, and we had to go to live with my great grandmother next to Eastville Park.
"It was while living there that I saw a German plane shot down by a Hurricane – I saw it falling, so closely that I could see the flames lapping around the pilot.
"I remember going into school each morning during the Blitz, and the teacher would read the register out and cross out the names of the children who had died the night before. Then it would be a case of moving straight on – 'okay class, so now get your maths books out'. But that was the only way.
"I remember finding my aunt laying on the floor sobbing, and a telegram laying next to her, which said that my uncle had been killed during the Normandy landings – he had died on D-Day. These things stay with you.
"It was a devastating time. The family shop was destroyed, though my father and uncles managed somehow to build it back up, and within a few years their new shop took up one whole side of Brunswick Square, where it was still trading until just a few decades ago."
Geoffrey was so affected by the war, as a teenager he became determined to join the RAF himself to train as a pilot.
"I used to think, they did this to us, but just wait until I'm behind the controls of an aeroplane!" he says. "Silly really, but that's how my mind was working on a deep level."
Geoffrey was able to join the airforce, but during his pilot training he was "picked" for special training in intelligence, and worked with Nato, under American control, in Germany for much of his 10 years with the forces – working on "top secret" projects, which he is still unable to reveal the details of today.
Back on civvy street, Geoffrey answered an advert in the Evening Post in 1970, calling for applications for newscasters for HTV – "no experience necessary".
"It's the sort of advert you just don't see these days," he laughs, "I'd wanted to go into acting, and I thought I bet I could do that newscasting lark – it seems ridiculous now how easy it was to get into television. It was the cost of a stamp. I was invited to an audition, and they obviously liked me, because they offered me the job."
Geoffrey spent much of the 1970s presenting various programmes on HTV, and later achieved his ambition of becoming an actor – specialising in radio dramas.
In 2005 his first foray into playwriting, Convoy, was produced at the Redgrave Theatre, inspired by a series in the Evening Post celebrating the heroism of the merchant navy seamen – the money raised by the production helped to pay for the merchant seamens' memorial, which now stands on Welsh Back, just yards from where Geoffrey and his father sheltered from the bombs on that fateful night in 1940.
"When you're a child of the war, it's almost like the war never leaves you, it's always there in the background," he says. "It's not just history for those of us who lived through it. The whole thing was very real, and it shaped us – made us the people we were to become."
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