大象传媒

I was Violet Harris when war broke out on September 3rd, and due to turn 14 on the 19th. It was a Sunday, and we were evacuated that same day from Stoke Council School to Fenny Compton. We went to a barn and were picked out according to who wanted you. Being on my own, I went to a young couple who lived in a little cottage and were very good to me. I had only been there 5 weeks when I was told that my sister had had an accident on her bike and was in hospital. So I came home and took a job at Bushell鈥檚 box factory.

That鈥檚 how I came to be in Coventry at the time of the Blitz. We were at home and had to go into the shelter at night. It was very bad. I was sent to work the next day, and the Cathedral and all the roads surrounding it were flat. Bushell鈥檚 was flat to the ground (although fortunately for me, I was due to leave the next day anyway!) I was quite upset and decided to return home. On the way I met my cousins, who told me I鈥檇 just missed the King- he鈥檇 been at the Cathedral ruins, inspecting the damage.

In later years I worked with a lady called, funnily enough, Violet Wilson. She talked me into going on a blind date with her nephew- and although I wasn鈥檛 too keen on the idea at first, she was very persuasive! He was home on leave, and celebrating his 21st birthday that week, as was I. So I met him by the Forum Picture House, in Walsgrave. The arrangement was this: if he took his cap off, he liked me, but if it stayed on, he didn鈥檛. Well- the cap remained firmly off his head! We just seemed to click, and in three weeks we were engaged! In October, he returned to Burma with the mounted police. He was back the following September, and we were married on April 10th in Holy Trinity Church, in the centre of Coventry. We had a happy life and 4 children- and were just 17 years off our 50th wedding anniversary when he died.

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