'The army said my dad suffered a horrific death - years later he knocked on our door'

Daily Mirror

08-05-2025

Survivors of the Hull blitz that left them fearing every minute could be our last' have told their incredible stories as we mark VE Day
One angry little girl whose home was destroyed in the bombing blitz on Hull said she wanted to 'punch Hitler and his Nazi gang in the jaw'.
Her rage was understandable as she had spent endless nights in the shelter as bombs shook her city. Hull fared terribly from the aerial onslaught.
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It endured 82 bombing raids, with 1,200 people killed and 3,000 more injured. Only five per cent of buildings escaped damage.
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During two nights of 'sheer hell', on May 7 and 8, 1941, 425 people were killed and 325 injured. During the hours of terror, the sky was 'black with planes' dropping more than 300 high-explosive bombs, naval mines by parachute and oil bombs the size of dustbins.
Children told of planes swooping so low they could see the sinister swastikas under the wings before they dropped their deadly cargo.
Terrifying eyewitness accounts were given by a group of 11 and 12-year-old girls. Enid Billaney talked about the night their street was hit and flames erupted: 'My father was out fire-fighting them. He came in with his arm burned. Mother bandaged it up. What a relief when the All Clear siren blew.
'We went out and the sky was one red glow from the fires in the city. The street was covered with bricks, tiles, shrapnel and soot.'
Edna Fewster wrote: 'Every time a bomb came down I screamed and cried. I was very frightened. All the men shouted, 'Duck, there's one coming down!' And we all bent down on our hands and knees.
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'When the All Clear was sounded we all gave a sigh of relief. When I went home I had no home to go to. But there was a kind old lady who said she would put us up for the rest of the night.
'I felt as though I could just go across to Germany and punch Hitler and his Nazi gang in the jaw.'
Mary Oxley, 12, wrote about the aftermath of one blast: 'Everybody was in a panic, running about the street, when a little boy cried out, 'There's something on fire in the sky'. All eyes gazed up to the sky. I thought, 'I wish Old Hitler was on fire'. It was a barrage balloon which had caught fire and soon a lot more caught fire…'
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As part of wartime policy, media reports to the rest of the country were deliberately vague, to prevent the Nazis building up accurate pictures of what their raids were achieving.
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Hull was never mentioned by name and reports simply said 'heavy bombing took place on a north-eastern coast town'.
The Mirror recently visited the city to speak to those who still have 'very vivid memories' of World War II and Mike Ulyatt, 85, told of the moment his dad arrived on his doorstep – after he had been presumed dead.
'My father was a sergeant in the East Yorkshire Regiment expeditionary force and in September 1939, they went across to Brussels and he was captured almost straight away and marched 300 miles down to southern Germany, to a prisoner-of-war camp.
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'My mum got a telegram from the War Office saying he was missing, presumed dead, killed in action. It was six months before she actually found out he was alive. '
Then he recalled what happened towards the end of the war: 'I was five and a half when there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and there's a bloke in Army uniform with this great big coat on, saying, 'Hello Michael, I'm your dad!'
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'It was a strange mixture of feelings because all of a sudden you were number two in your mum's eyes instead of number one and left thinking, 'Who is this stranger?''
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But he admits the war left its mark: 'I had a baby's gas mask which covered you completely. I was encased completely. It was a horrible sensation. I've suffered from claustrophobia ever since and I can only put it down to being enclosed in that area for three or four years during the war.
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'Recently I had an MRI and talking to the radiographer who settled me down told me to take deep breaths. I felt like a coward, I was shaking.'
But he, like others in his city, is far from a coward. 'One night a barrage balloon came loose from its mooring and floated around, knocking several house chimneys down.
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'It eventually deflated over a nearby street, and the neighbourhood panicked thinking it was a German parachutist landing. People dashed from their homes with sticks and brush handles, determined to defend themselves only to realise what had happened. Panic over.'
His wife Ann, 79, lost seven of her relatives during the Blitz, including Frederick Wallis, 54, and his wife Catherine, 48, who ran The Punch Hotel, next to Hull City Hall.
On May 7, 1941 the warden arrived and warned them to come out of the pub and go to the shelter because there was going to be a heavy bomb raid that night.
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'My great uncle and his whole family plus an unborn grandchild, for him, were all killed in the Prudential building that got a direct hit. They all perished. If they'd stayed in the Punch they would have survived as there were only a few broken windows. It's devastating,'
A total of 16 died – including Frederick, Catherine, and their teenaged son and daughter. Their heavily pregnant daughter and her husband were also killed as they had come to stay with her parents after the air raid warning.
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Great-grandad Keith Brown, 89, a former security guard from Hull University, recalling the wartime in his home city, said: 'Sometimes when they bombed Hull our shelter lifted off the ground. It was that bad.
'Where we lived a big factory was in the area and it was a target. They missed and got the communal gardens instead one time. We felt the ground lift then.'
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He heard the incredible 'the war is over' news on the radio and ran into the street with his mum and younger sister. 'We were jubilant. All the neighbours were out. Mums and dads got the balloons and trimmings out. We had a late bedtime that night.'
Keith's dad was still away in North Africa with the Royal Engineers: 'I didn't see him for about seven years, he was a stranger when he came home. We had photographs of him during the war and then we got back from school and saw him.
'We ran to him because we recognised him from the photographs. He was a lovely man. He loved us. There were plenty of tears, he was filling up, too.' John Patterson, 84, a former electrical engineer, told us: 'I remember watching from my bedroom window. They came by the thousands. The sky looked black.'
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He explained how his dad had been a conscientious objector during the war. 'He was very religious so they let him paint fire stations instead.
'They dug up the lawn and planted veg instead. We had chickens, too, for the eggs. When the war finished he made it into a lawn again.
'I remember having a party at the end of the war and it surprised me because my parents joined in.'
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Hull's archivist Martin Taylor said: 'For its size, Hull was one of the heaviest bombed cities in the United Kingdom. The bombing affected everybody's lives.
'Everybody who's grown up in the city knows that Hull was the forgotten city.
'The 'north east coastal town' was how the air raids in Hull were reported and although this was common practice… it has really stuck that we are the forgotten city.'