大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Chloe Broadley of the CSV 大象传媒 Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Daisy Winfield and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in Swan Lane - near the Ordnance factory. The German bombers wanted to get that. The canal, at the back of our house, shone in the bright light of what we used to call a "bombers moon". That misled the Germans, they hit the canal instead, and the canal water came right over into our back garden, right by the house. I was crying to my mum; "Well, we're all right, we're upstairs" she said.
One night my brother and my husband-to-be went down the entry to watch the bombers. My brother said "We'd better get a move on, they're getting too close". They went back up the entry just in time - a bomb hit the gas lamp at the bottom of the entry, split it in two and blew it apart.
We were all told one night to get out of Swan Lane and go to the shelter at Frederick Bird School. We wouldn't go. Between the front and back rooms of our house was the coal cellar: my mum had the coal put in the garden, then she cleaned it out and put a bit of carpet down, so we always went in there. That shelter at Frederick Bird got a direct hit that night and all the people in it were killed.
Three doors from where I lived in Swan Lane was our neighbour Derek: I worked with his lady friend. He went to pick her up at Freehold Street - there they always went down into the cellars. Derek and his girl friend went for a drink in the pub across the street. The sirens went. "Oh come on Derek, we must get back to me mother's" she said. He finished his drink, then they went back to the house and went down the cellar. The house got a direct hit, they all died. All that was left was her wedding gown, still hanging up - they were to have been married in two weeks time.

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