大象传媒

I was brought up in Coventry in my teenage years and well remember the massive devastation particularly in November 1940 when Coventry Cathedral was blitzed, and April 1941. I lived with my parents very close to the GEC factory which was severely bombed in the April attacks. The pattern was that Coventry was hit one night and Birmingham the next - though on occasions they 'cheated' and bombed Coventry on consecutive nights! On one occasion I was having a relaxing bath when, very inconveniently, an incendiary bomb hit the house next door but one. After that I was very careful to make sure that the coast was well clear before I ventured into the bath! We had an air raid shelter down the garden which we shared with next door. My mother always had a basket of food and essentials ready for our stay during the air raids. Does anyone else remember swandown face cream (green in colour) - a bit of a treat!
I started work as a telephonist at the Central Post Office in Coventry and was promoted to telegraphist - I loved the work. I transmitted telegrams around the country and Ireland. We had a supervisor who kept our noses to the grindstone to make sure we kept any chatter with our neighbour telegraphists to the absolute minimum. One day I was late for work (ie just over the 3 minutes allowed) due delays caused by bomb craters in the street - my supervisor told me that I should have left earlier to allow for it! Unfortunately I didn't have any inside knowledge of the exact timing of the German raids!! Having said all that, we all respected and really liked our supervisor. Often I had to go home in an air raid. My boyfriend John, later to become my husband, and I used to enjoy walking home in the blackout - there were some compensations!
Coventry as is well known was hit very badly - I recall a whole street being wiped out by a land mine. But somehow we coped through it, a lot of improvisation and make do and mend. There were places we could go and stay (at a cost) in the country to get away from it all for a spell but somehow we preferred to to stick it out with our friends and relations in Coventry. Christmas was often a bit of a trial but not without its humour. One Christmas we had electricity but no gas and our friends had gas but no electricity. So we walked to the other side of Coventry and cooked the meal which we ate by candle light!
So many memories - the water van coming down the street when the main had been hit, seeing the bombers swarming to give us another pasting - oh so many memories. But we survived and most of us lived to tell the tale.
I later married and moved to Norton but those memories will stay with me for ever.

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