大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from the Coventry & Warwickshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Beth Lowe and has been added to the site with her permission.

I was fourteen and lived on Holbrooks Lane, I had finished work early on that Thursday evening to get ready to go dancing, when the sirens sounded. Everyday we were warned about the eminent danger and what to do if the sirens sounded, at that moment I could hear my mother shouting above the noise of the sirens. 鈥淕et out, run to the shelter鈥�, we rushed out the front door and raced down the street, running as fast as we could towards the air raid shelter under the bridge in Lockhurst Lane.
My Mum carried my baby sister in her arms, and as we ran the sirens seemed to get louder and louder, we ran faster and faster towards the shelter. Suddenly I heard my mother call out in pain and turned in time to see her fall on top of my sister! The loud thud as her elbows hit the ground made me shudder, and the fear that my baby sister would be squashed was so frightened that it will stay with me for the rest of my life. My Mum called out 鈥淲e鈥檙e all right, don鈥檛 stop running鈥� and my sister was crying as my mother struggled to get up.

The noise and excitement of the sirens seemed to fade as we moved further under the bridge; the space was filled with music coming from an old man sitting on a box just inside the entrance. He playing an old fashioned accordion and his music seemed to calm the nervous excitement of the gathering crowd. I think he may have played all night to calm frightened people, he was playing softly when I fell asleep and the accordion music was still being played when I woke up in the early hours the next day.
In the morning we left the shelter and walked back up Lockhurst Lane in silence, our mouths were open wide at the smoke rising from damaged buildings all over the city.

When we reached our house it looked OK, but the roof over the back bedroom had a big hole in it. An incendiary device had gone through it during the raid and lay on a pile of bed cloths piled on the bare wooden floor, fortunately the bomb had failed to ignite. We were told by a Fire Wardens to move out until the bomb squad could get around to disarming the bomb, but he said, they had much more urgent work to deal with in the factory.

St Luck鈥檚 church hall was to be our home for the next six weeks, we lay on hard flat mattress on the hard polished wooden floor and drank lots of tea. We were very grateful for the shelter.
The next day we went around to the house to get clothes and personal effects, when we arrived men in uniform were coming down the hill from Holbrooks, they appeared to be assessing the bomb damage to the buildings and looking for unexploded bombs and incendiary devices. We waited outside our front door until the men drew level with us; my Mum spoke to them and threw our house keys into the hands of the older man saying that they could have what little the food there was in the house, as we were being looked after at St Luck鈥檚.
My family spent the rest of the war running between the shelter and our house opposite the Dunlop factory whenever the sirens sounded.

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