����ý

The Coventry Blitz 1940 – Memory of Elsie Shields now aged 93

We had a late tea, as Harold, my husband had been detained at Rootes car factory with Home Guard business, so the tea cosy was still on the teapot when the sirens wailed their warning at 7 p.m. on the night of November 14th, 1940.
Our two daughters, aged six and five, were already night gowned for bed, so hastily I zipped them in to their little siren suits, made a nest of pillows and blankets in the corner of the dining room near the fireplace, with the heavy oak writing desk pushed nearer to them for protection. We could not use the communal street shelter, as the girls were quite ill with whooping cough, other children could not be exposed to the infection.
The blackout blinds and curtains were all in place and I picked up some knitting and sat in a big chair in the corner near the French doors with the warm tea cosy on my head that Harold had, in fun, placed there. Our gas masks were nearby and Harold was wearing a Home Guard tin helmet. We quietly waited, but not for long!
At 7.30 p.m. the drone of heavy planes began and the bombs to fall, first on the city centre and then on the outskirts where we lived in Wyken. Harold looked out of the front door and came to fetch me to see a marvellous sight! Multi-coloured incendiaries were dropping into gardens like fairy lights, but much more lethal of course, the whole city was ringed with leaping flames, bathed in brilliant moonlight and a few searchlights were sweeping the smoke-filled sky. Shrapnel from the nearest anti-aircraft gun rained down on the tiles of our roof. Suddenly soot fell down the chimney and I went to wet the girls’ face flannels to bathe their blackened faces, but there was no water! We only had candle light too. The all the glass blew out of the French window, showering my head, so the tea cosy came in useful after all! Harold nailed up plywood to cover our gaping windows, able to see by the light of the fires and the moonlight outside.
A feeble solitary “All Clear” came at 6.15 a.m. the next day. A stand pipe in a garden nearby provided us with water and I made tea on our spirit picnic stove. Stepping over broken glass and doors I hurried along Hermitage Road, where some of my family lived, to check that my mother and younger sisters were not harmed. Later Harold rode his bike up to the Radford district of Coventry to check on his brother, only to be turned away by Police – an unexploded land mine was swaying by silken cords between the gable ends of his brother’s house and the one next door, thankfully all of the occupants safely evacuated.
Workmen moved into the city and outskirts at day break, replacing broken windows with thick cardboard, sweeping up debris; unexploded bombs were taken to be detonated on Whitley Common, and water and gas pipes were hastily laid, but above road surfaces.
When, eventually, we went to the city centre the devastation was heartbreaking, the lovely old black and white buildings gone, the beautiful cathedral a smoking ruin, a new store just a gaping hole. Only the clock tower remained intact in the old market!

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.