大象传媒

This story was submitted to the the People's War site by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Johon Windridge and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was just three years old when war broke out, and lived with my parents and elder sister in Coventry.
I still have vivid memories of the "Blitz" on Coventryin November 1940, as during each air-raid over the city mu father would carry me out to the Anderson shelter in the garden, still in my pyjamas.
Often I would go to sleep in my own bed in the house only to wake up the following mo0rning in the air-raid shelter.
One morning during this time I woke up to find it was still dark. This ws because a huge barrage balloon had been torn from its moorings and was pressing its bulging grey mass right against my bedroom window. i got up and raced outside to watch it bouncing up and down on our privet hedge. I wasn't old enough to realize it at the time, but it might easily have exploded at any moment.
Later it was towed away by local air-raid wardens and RAF men.
Our house was situated not far from the former Morris works which had been turned into a munitions factory, and my mother was just one of the many hundreds of women employed as munitions workers there.
Each morning the fields and allotments between our house and Sewall highway and the works would be dotted with bomb craters, as the Morris works seemed to be a key target in the area. Our front door and windows were smashed during one of these frequent air-raids.
Often myself and my friends would clamber down these freshly made craters in search of shrapnel and incendary bomb tail fins. The latter were a much prized possession and we used to paint them black and place them on the mantlepiece at home, though heaven knows the risks we must have ran from unexploded bombs, as many of the craters were still smouldering....
During one of these air-raids one of our local cinemas called the "Rex" i believe, received a direct hit. This was quite ironoc as they were showing "Gone with Wind" at the time. Another cinema close by called the "Carlton" was also hit in a later raid while screening Errol Flynn in the "Adventures of Robin Hood".
The roof was completly destroyed and it never opened again after that....
At this time all children has toi carry a gas mask in a cardbord box strung over their shoulder, and each moring we had a gas-mask drill at St Mary's school in Bell Green which I and my sister attended. On the sound of the air-raid siren we had to don our gas-masks in ten seconds flat while the teacher counted up to ten, and then we had to jog down to the air-raid shelter still wearing them. On one morning we arriced to find the school was closed due to the bombing, and romour had that a man's arm was found hanging from the weather vane....
After the blitz my sister and I were evacuated in December 1940 to the little village of Cubbington nesr Leamington Spa. Here we were housed in a public house with a friendly landlord called Mr Gregory who also owned a timber-yard nearby, and each night we would often see a huge red glow in the sky from the bombs which were falling on Coventry and Birmingham.
One of Mr Gregories hobbies was making lead soldiers and I would often assist him by the fire as he pored the moulten lead into the moulds and I loved to line the soldiers up in regiments on the table to cool.....

I also witnessed a plane coming down when I was helping weed in the allotments. Someone shouted "Duck!" and we all dived for cover. The plane had struck a barrage ballon cable.
I was evacuated twice. Once to my aunts in Brinklow. I remember one moring my cousin getting out of bed and doing his exercises - all of a sudden he fell through the floor - an incediary had come through the roof and made a hole that had only a tempory repair.
I used to collect incediaries. I painted them black and had them in bedroom - I kept them until I was 21. At school we used to compete to see who could find the biggest piece of shrapnell.
The first time I was evacuated, we stayed in an old pub in Cubbington. The daughter, didn't like me for some reason and she would cuff me round the ear !
I was really small at the time - I rode to school on the back of an alsation.
There were communal air-raid shelters across from our house. I was about 5 and me and three of my mates climbed on top and the fire brigade had to be called.
I remember there were "Police Boxes" and "First Aid Posts" all over the place. As kids we thought the war was fun - the air-raid sirens were exciting and so was the all clear signal.

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