大象传媒

Just along, by the reservoir, in Scots Lane, Coventry, on the Bablick School field there was a unit that let up the barrage balloon. That was very important and my father used to collect soft cover books for the men to read, Sherlock Holmes, Zane Grey, things like that. We used to have two carrier bags, they were made of thick brown paper and they had little handles of red and white twisted string or green and white, yellow and white, blue and white. I can remember these carrier bags; they were lovely. He used to fill two of those from the fellows at the Daimler, where he worked, and then on the Saturday morning he used to give them to us, Ronald, my brother, used to carry those, they were a bit heavy for me. Up the lane, we used to go to the gate, and we passed these bags of books in to the fellows that let the barrage balloon up. But then one day the barrage balloon snapped it鈥檚 wire, and it just floated up in the sky, and it floated across and it landed on our chimney. Mrs Kelsey, our neighbour, and my mother had to put their fires out and it was going 鈥減lop, plop, plop鈥� just bouncing up and down because it had lost its air as well. Of course, we children, talk about swank and show-off, it was a sight to behold; 鈥淚t鈥檚 on our house. It鈥檚 on our chimney, not your chimney鈥� (of course nobody had bikes or anything like that). The men had to come and get it off with a rope, and they did get it down and take it away. We thought that was quite fun.

Then, Father鈥檚 work was moved to Leicestershire. We lived at Earl Shilton with a couple who were friends of his, Ellis Botterill, who worked with my father he said we could share their home. So we moved all our furniture into their house, which was a bit of a tight squeeze. But the day we moved from Scots Lane the van was backed down into Christchurch Road so we had to walk down to the side gate, down a little bit to the back of the van and put everything in the van, and I said to my father 鈥淭here鈥檚 an aeroplane up in the sky, up there. So father came out of the van, looked round the corner and he said, 鈥淚t鈥檚 alright, it鈥檚 an Itie鈥�. I can remember him saying that 鈥淚t鈥檚 an Itie鈥�. Then suddenly there were five little puffs round it. It came straight down. They鈥檇 shot it down.

When I went to Earl Shilton to live I had to go to school in Barwell to which we had to walk from Earl Shilton down the road all the way into Barwell a mile and a half and in deep snow, I remember trudging in deep snow. We were not allowed not to go to school. We couldn鈥檛 say to my mother 鈥渢he snow 鈥︹��, and there was no means of getting there other than walking. When we got there our coats were dried on a railed guard they had all round a central stove with a chimney pipe up. We had hot water pipes on the sides of the room (they were painted green) and they used to put the crates of milk on the top of those. I always had two bottles of milk because I was a very tall child. I was always in the hospital so they said, 鈥淪he can have two bottles of milk鈥�. I loved it. The little caps on the milk; they were cardboard and you pressed the hole out of the middle. Well, we used to wrap wool round those and make pompons for the strings that held the neck together of little boleros that my Gran knitted. I had cardigans as well that Gran knitted; both sets of grandparents were still in Coventry.

My brother had to go to the big boy鈥檚 school down in Barwell itself, and I was in a Miss Bennett鈥檚 class; she was very tall, and the most wonderful lady in the world, Miss Bennett. When I got to her class, of course, I was the only evacuee in the school, and anyone who laughed when Sylvia got under the desk was caned. They weren鈥檛 allowed to laugh, because I had been told, when sirens go, and you鈥檙e not at home you get under a table, under something that鈥檚 got a roof on it, and hopefully in a corner, because if you notice when a building falls the corners are always left standing. Only the walls go, and the roof goes in and the corners are always standing.

You know, you did an awful lot of help in the days. People say that to live during the war must have been awful. No it wasn鈥檛. There was an old lady down Poole Road in Coventry, she used to stand at the gate and she wore a coat which must have come from the 1880s, long, with a big button on the side, and she had a hat on her head that was shaped like the old chamber pot with a little tiny brim (didn鈥檛 have a handle on the back!). She used to stand at the gate, and the apples out of her garden, she used to make toffee apples. Well, that would be her sugar ration, or Golden Syrup if she could get it, but she used that and she鈥檇 stand at the gate and sell them to us children for a ha鈥檖enny. There were public shelters, for people who were walking, and caught in a raid. There was one just down the bottom of Christchurch Road, and there was another one in Poole Road, that I know of. Brick built shelters, and there were two facing each other so you went in between, into a door left or right, and you could get, I should say, about, probably twenty people in if you were standing up but they were O.K. You would probably only get three or four people in at a time, but they were there for everybody to go into. They got organised, I can鈥檛 understand how quickly they got organised. People pulled together and if you had got, say, a birth or somebody died everybody sent food. It might be a bit of margarine, or it might be some bread coupons, because we had coupons. It might be, if there was a birthday or something, children didn鈥檛 go without, some of the older ones who didn鈥檛 eat their ration, they would give their coupons, or they would buy the stuff and give the child Maltesers or something. We had a fish and chip shop just by the Feeder鈥檚 shop; it was just up near the Catholic church, and they built onto the flat front window, they built a tunnel in some sort of pressed cardboard, I don鈥檛 think it was wood, I don鈥檛 know, it could have been plywood but whatever it was it seemed to be cardboard but as strong as plywood. So they built the tunnel out, and then turned it, so you had to go in, and turn in then. That was so the light wouldn鈥檛 show through. A lot of shops had things like that, and some of the windows, they were barricaded up and they just left the door, not barricaded, because blast seemed to kill people and it took the windows out, because people, I suppose, did used to go looting.

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Joe Taylor for the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Sylvia Fairbrother and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

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