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'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Rick Allden of the CSV ´óÏó´«Ã½ Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Eva Foster and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions'.

When war was declared on September 3rd 1939, I was just nine years old. I lived with my parents Ernest and Sarah Goodman, my uncle Herbert (my father’s brother), my aunt Amy (my mother’s sister) and my two cousins, Alma and Alan, in Shakespeare Street, Stoke, Coventry.

Coventry started to be bombed regularly and most nights we would spend in our cellar. It was then decided we would put mattresses on the back of the two coal lorries (my father was a coal merchant), which were covered in tarpaulin. We then clambered on board and drove into the countryside, until we heard the ‘all clear’ siren sound, and we would then return. This was alright until the weather got cold, when we returned to the cellar.

The cellar was damp, so we had to bring the mattresses upstairs each morning to be aired. One night my parents, uncle, aunt and grandmother had been sitting around a table, playing cards, when they decided they had had enough and to go to bed, which were round the perimeter of the cellar. They no sooner climbed into bed when the two wooden doors, which lead from the cellar to outside, were blown off and the card table smashed against the wall of the stairs leading up to the room above. We don’t like to think what would have happened if they had not moved.

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