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My mother was always a soft touch, anyone coming to the door, asking for something; I recall the tramp that seemed to turn up at regular intervals asking for a mashing of tea and a crust of bread, of course, he always went away loaded with sandwiches and a large slice of cake; no wonder he always returned! Which brings me to one morning, early in 1940: a knock came at the door, mum was greeted by a man with a good head of ginger hair, and an Irish accent, asking if he could stay for the day, all he had with him was an attaché case, mum naturally asked him in, as usual; at that time many households took in ‘Guests’ that had come to the city to work, God knows where she put them, there wasn’t room for all of us in those days, I suppose tea and lunch were provided, knowing my mum, -- all this was related to us when we came home from school,---mum said that he asked to use the toilet, which was duly granted, so up he went to the bathroom; but he seemed to want to go upstairs at regular intervals,-- I suppose, at the time mum didn’t think anything of it till he left in the afternoon,--when mum went up to the bathroom, and saw that there were scrapings of white paint all over the Lino, she couldn’t make out why it was there, so, starting to get worried, she went to my aunt daisy in Grantham St. just around the corner, told her, she came around and saw the paint on the floor, and said that they should go to the policeman’s house just down the road and tell him about it, well, what transpired was, the police did come and have a look, in fact, several came, took notes and discussed it at length; what they found, was a length of copper pipe leading from the bath to the gas boiler, it had been scraped clean, and that the window was open. Mary and I came home from school as usual, mum told us about this man, what he looked like, and what had happened, I don’t suppose we thought much about it, had some tea, and went down to the park as usual to watch the Barrage Balloon being inflated, ready for night time; we came home, told mum that we had seen a man, looking like the one she had described, sitting on a bench, and either writing, or reading a book; mum probably told the Police, I don’t remember, but the local bobby did come around later, and said that he thought that they probably had had a ‘Spy’, and that he could have been sending messages? The area we lived in was very important around that time, there was an Ordinance Factory, making heavy guns, and a factory making munitions and tanks, a large tyre factory etc, and all the munitions were transported by rail I should think, because the marshalling yards for all the rolling stock was close by, and both Binley Road, and Walsgrave Road were railway bridges, then there was the Balloon Barrage site in Gosford Green. Whether this guy was a spy or not, we will probably never know, but the following November, the 14/15 was the night of the heaviest blitz on the city which of course destroyed our house, what a fascinating story!!

About September of that year I was sent to Corley Open Air School, about five miles from Coventry, this school was in fact a type of hospital for children in poor health, they were sent by schools to receive treatment and recuperate, also children generally run down in health, I don't know if I was sent by the school, I couldn't say, but with all that was going on during this time I don't know. The school was out in the country, we had to sleep in dormitories with one side open to the elements with just a small partition, about four foot high, it was very cold all the time, about thirty boys to a room, we had teaching and nursing staff twenty four hours a day care, lots of medicine, walks and rest, I didn't like the place at all, they were very strict with us, when it rained they would bring us some sort of cover for the bed, I remember the wind on my face at night, I suppose they looked after us and taught us as best they could.

On the night of the fourteenth of November, the night of the Coventry blitz (1940), we were all taken into the main assembly hall and sat on the floor, we could hear the drone of lots of aircraft overhead and then the noise of the bombs falling on the city, the school was on a hill, and I remember looking out of the window in the middle of the night,- none of us could sleep- and seeing the sky all red , and looking at the city in flames, it was a terrible sight to see, and boys and girls crying, The building shook with an explosion in the middle of the night , the staff running all over the building , it was frightening . The next morning we all went for a walk out onto the road and in the field opposite the school we could see lots of men and a fire engine, we were told that a stray bomb had been dropped and exploded, the matron told us afterwards that if it had fallen about one hundred yards across the road it could have landed on the school, we all thought this was great, not realising the consequences, so we were lucky. On the Sunday morning following the bombing, dad came to the school and I was sent for, the matron told me that my dad wanted to take me home, he was told that I was to stay, well nobody tells my dad what to do, so we went to the dormitory and he packed my case and we started to walk into Coventry.
On the way home dad told me that our home had been bombed, and that we were living at someone else's house. On the way into Coventry all the roads and houses were in ruins, the roads were so bad that no transport was available, so we had to walk home as best as we could.

When we got to King Richard St I could see that our house had fallen into the cellar, and was still smouldering, as we stood in the road all that remained of the house was the fireplace in the front room, I remember it well, it was white marble and had roses all down the side, it was now black with the fire.
I don't remember whose house I went to, I think that we were staying there on a temporary basis, but I do remember that all the family had stayed in shelters and somebody let us stay in their cellar for a while. One day we were told that we had been given a house by an Air Raid Warden till we could find somewhere permanent. The house we had been given was in 41 Wren St. about three streets from where we had been bombed, it was the second house from the City Football Ground, and near the stand. The house had no roof, so we couldn't sleep in the bedrooms, I remember all the rubble on the stairs.
We had been given some furniture and clothes, so at night we had to sleep on the floor under the beds, so that when the bombs exploded the rubble would land on the bed, it must have been very hard for mum and dad to try and run a house under those conditions,. We must remember that while all this was going on we had to either go to school or work, this was not easy, because sometimes the siren would sound in the daytime as well, so we all had to leave school or work and go down the shelters, some shelters were in the street and some were in the parks. I remember the shelter in Gosford Green Park, we had to go down lots of steps and into a sort of tunnel, we had to sit on some bench's against the wall, everywhere smelt damp, the smell of concrete comes to mind. We had duck boards on the concrete floors, and the floor underneath was always covered with water, and when it rained, the water would come in from the air vents from above ground, the shelter always seemed to be crowded.

The night of the fourteenth of November, the night of the bombing, mum, Lil, Mary and Tony, went down to the underground shelter in the park, dad, Jack and Mr. Finney who was living with us,--Mr. Finney was also an Air Raid Warden--stayed in the house. The Anderson Shelter had been taken from the garden and erected in the cellar--dad thought that it would be safer for us--.
The three of them and Bob our Wire Haired Terrier stayed in the shelter, also in the shelter were small items of value, letters photographs, insurance books etc. Early in the morning of the fifteenth, one of them thought they could hear the sound of breaking glass and thought that someone had broken in, so they went up the stairs of the cellar, opened the door and were confronted by a very bright blue light in the hall, and the smell of burning and thick black smoke. They rushed out into the hall and saw an Incendiary bomb well alight and tried to put it out, they suddenly realised that it had fallen through the ceiling and that the whole house was well alight. They told us that they then rushed back along the hall and into the -- what we called the kitchen-- but was the back room -- and grabbed what they could, which was the Wireless and I think a chair and table, and got out into the back garden. They then said that they rushed down to the shelter in the park, to tell mum what had happened.
By this time the house was well alight, all they could do was watch as the house burned to the ground, and nobody could do anything about it. because by that time in the morning the city had run out of water so the fire brigade could only watch as the buildings burned down, it must have been a nightmare for whole households to watch all their possessions go up in flames, poor mum. Dad or Jack ran down to the park and told mum, they all came up from the shelter and ran up the street to the house, but all they could do was watch the whole house burning, I remember our Lil telling me that when they went around the back of the house and into the back garden she couldn't believe what she saw, that her whole bedroom was falling through the ground floor window and down into the cellar, and that within minutes the roof collapsed, leaving only the walls standing . Of course they couldn’t salvage a thing, all they had was the clothes they had on them when they went down to the shelter. It seemed like fate that the part of the family that stayed in the house, heard the noise of breaking glass in the hall above should survive all this, it appears that the only casualty was Bob the dog, it was never seen again, perhaps it scrambled out when they came up, or did it stay down in the cellar, they never knew. When they returned the next day they found that the house next door was not touched, the Wardens that were on duty told them that it was their opinion that the house had had a basket of incendiaries--around twenty or thirty in all--on the house, these were about eighteen inches long and about two inches thick, and filled with an explosive charge and contained Phosphorus, and on the rear was a fin about six inches long, this accounts for the strong blue light they saw on entering the hallway.
These would cause a severe and sustained fire and the heat would be intense, and would last for several minutes. My brother Stan was sent for, he was in the army at that time, and tries to find somewhere for all of them to live, which couldn't have been an easy task at that time, with hundreds of homes raised to the ground. I don't remember what they said happened after that till the day dad came to take me to what was called home on the Sunday.
I do remember them telling me about the fire that was still burning in the cellar for days was the coal that they had delivered only a few days earlier.
It was also sad for Stan and Jack, because all their paintings and sketches went up in flames, they said that there were stacks of them in their bedroom, all very sad.

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