大象传媒

A Wartime Childhood

I was born in 1936 in Thomas Lane Street, Little Heath, Coventry. My earliest childhood memory was being evacuated to Polesworth with my mother and my little brother, but we only stayed for six months.

I started school in 1941 at what was called Old Church School. Every morning I had to take 陆 d for our milk, this would come in small churns from the local milkman- Mr. Dutton. I also had to take a mug into which the milk was doled out with a small ladle. Every child took their gas mask to school in its cardboard box; these stood on our desks. About once a week the headmaster came in and shouted 鈥淕as Attack鈥� every one then rushed to put on their gas mask, once mine ended up hanging around my neck. A few months later we started to get milk in 1/3 pint bottles which had a cardboard top and this was free. I saved these tops, made a hole in them, and by winding wool around them made pom-poms.

I lived in Thomas Lane Street through the Coventry Blitz and I remember two incidents of damage. One was an incendiary bomb landing on a roof of a house at the far end of the street, and burning through to the bedroom. The second was damage to our house. A delayed action bomb was dropped in the next street (Quilletts Close), which demolished a row of 4 houses. As there was a gap in the row of houses opposite, us, the blast hit our house with such force it broke all the window catches and the front bedroom ceiling came down. These were prepared with sheets of plaster (plaster between two sheets of cardboard) nailed to the roof timbers and sealed with paper tape. We were lucky not to have suffered more damage being so close to Courtaulds factory.

Adjacent to Old Church School was the wooden Church Hall, always called 鈥淭he Institute鈥� in her I learnt country dancing and one day a week it was used by the Welfare Clinic where babies were weighed and examined by the district nurse. As petrol was in short supply she arrived on a horse which was tethered by the institute or turned out on the grass in front where children would pat or stroke it - O happy days!

By modern standards I had a dangerous childhood, finding and examining dead incendiary bombs and collecting shrapnel that sometimes had very sharp edges. Often I played on bomb sites and in the bombed buildings. The streets of Little Heath were safe to play in because the only motorised vehicle I ever saw was the milkman鈥檚 car: he had taken the back seats out to carry the milk in this space. His milk float had been burnt-out months before by incendiary bombs.
A favourite among the boys was collecting army badges or buttons I had about 20 such items. When the local Home Guard did their .22 rifle practice on a piece of waste ground we were kept well away, but when they marched away we were straight in looking for cartridge cases or bullets- I never found any!

In 1944 one boy鈥檚 father came home on leave from france and brought a Nazi peaked cap, every one wanted to see or try it on, to us children the war was an adventure that is, if you had not lost any relations.

ROY JOHN COGLEY.

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