大象传媒

This story ws submitted to the People's war site by Julie Jobburn of the CSV 大象传媒 Coventry & Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Audrey Routledge (nee Richardson) and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

Early in in the war, we had discussed the possibility of being evacuated. We were a family of six at the time and decided that we would all stay together, rather than be separated.

We lived very near the Rootes munitions factory which was a key target for the German bombers. The planes had been trying for days to bomb the factory, but it was well camouflaged. We had heard the planes trying to find the factory in the days leading up to the events in my story.

On this particular day, I was at school with my older brother and sister. My father was working nights and had been sent off by my mum during the day to get his hair cut.

My mother was at home with my baby sister and remembers hearing a bomb whistling down and being terrified about how close it seemed. She grabbed my sister, ran down the garden and literally dived into our Anderson shelter. The bomb landed directly on our house, which of course was completely flattened.

Meanwhile at school, the sirens had gone off. I went to the school shelter with all the other children, but my older sister was always worrying about my mum and she had run out of the school and had headed towards home. The bombs were coming down around her, but luckily the rent man had seen her running along our road, grabbed her and taken cover to keep her safe.

My father arrived back from his hair cut to find our part of the road completely cordoned off. He was told by the warden that he was not allowed to go into his house. He pushed past the warden saying, "You鈥檙e not stopping me mate, my wife and baby are under there!"

He found them both safe and sound in the shelter under the rubble and debris.

Later in the day he came to meet me from school and I can still remember that instead of feeling upset, I felt quite excited when I was told by my father that our house had been bombed and we had no home left.

The sad part for me was that the remains of our house were looted and all our toys, even my roller skates had been stolen.

Tragically a lot of young RAF men had been billeted in Western Avenue, which was close by, and this too had been flattened during that particular raid.

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