大象传媒

It was nearly teatime on a Thursday, an ordinary day. This was always 'bedroom day' in our house, when Mum used to clean the bedrooms. This was a bit special though as she had some new furniture (I think the first new furniture, ever). Dad was due home any minute and us kids were hungry.
Mum had just got to the bottom of the stairs dusting them as she came down. My dollies were asleep in their pram in the hall. As she reached the bottom stair the air raid sirens went.
Mum did her usual routine of filling all available pots and pans with water ... just in case. She went round and made sure all the blackout was in place and not leaking light out anywhere. We didn't have an air raid shelter in the garden as many did in those times. Dad had supported the understairs cupboard in our house and next door with pit props and we used to go in there. The little ones slept on the floor and Mum and Dad and my eldest sister had chairs by the door.We kids didn't mind going in there, as there were posh biscuits in a tin (unheard of in those days). My younger sister and I had dolls in shoe boxes as cradles in there too. We were only allowed to have those when in the shelter so it was all a bit of an adventure. I think we must have had tea but don't really recall that, however, it became obvious it was a big raid and we went into our shelter. Dad had not come home and I remember thinking that was odd, he was always there when he was supposed to be.
I remember wave after wave of planes going over and very loud bangs going off and the noise of guns. Mum tried to tell us not to worry, it was our planes sending the Germans away. We knew this was wrong as we knew the sounds of the different planes, kids used to take pride in knowing these things .... but we didn't say anything.
I remember one VERY loud bang, the house really shook that time and there was dust everywhere... it was scary. Dad still wasn't home.
There was a knock on the door and it was the air raid wardens asking if we were alright and if we had any water to spare. Mum asked what it was like where Dad would most likely have been and he looked gloomy and said "It's bad down there". "It's bad Mother" is all he would say about the raid in general.
At one point Mum asked me to recite a prayer we had learned at school... it began, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of trouble...
She must have been scared witless herself and
trying to keep it from us.
The night eventually passed, the 'all clear' sounded and we emerged.
Our house was a mess! The front had collected the worst of the damage, from the back it looked reasonably OK. The front door was up at the top of the stairs... having neatly sailed over the top of my dolls' pram on the way! Dollies were still asleep although covered in dust. The windows were gone. You could see daylight between the living room and the front room of the house if you looked up! Our chair backs and cushions were draped over the telephone poles and the public house opposite had caught the worst of the blast from the landmine which had caused all this. The front room furniture and the bedrooms were all badly damaged, some beyond repair. The piano, which was nice little modern one, was badly damaged but survived, to be totally destroyed when it went to the repair shop later and that burned down in another raid.
Still, we were all OK.... but WHERE WAS DAD? We children went to the gate and looked for him for ages and ages. There was so much going on with all the mess and air raid wardens still racing about helping. There was debris everywhere but still no Dad. Then eventually great joy! A very weary looking, familiar figure appeared, trudging up the road... pushing his old bike. He couldn't ride it there was too much debris about.
"Thank God you are all safe he said.... and the house, it looks OK too". But this was the back, he couldn't see the damage from there. It transpired that he had tried to get home, dodging from one public shelter to another but had eventually been ordered to stay in one of them till the raid was over.
Our little world was much better for having him back.
Of course, much later I found out that this was a minor part of what went on in the City that night. Our lovely old Cathedral was burning and totally destroyed, whole streets of houses were gone and there were many dead and injured. In fact much of the City was destroyed, but a small child's perspective is much narrower than that. I was seven years old at the time.
Later that day, we decided to try to get to my Grandmother's cottage in the country. We walked to a station in the suburbs... not the one in town and managed to get a train to Banbury.
We had no means of onward travel from there but a very helpful WVS lady persuaded an army vehicle to takes us to Grandma's. We took another family with us from Coventry and when we got there were surprised to see that they were half expecting to see us. That night, five of us kids slept the wrong way round in one double bed. The adults slept wherever they could.... but it was heaven and QUIET too! Again it is smells I remember from that occasion... this time of parafin lamps in a nice warm kitchen with an ingle nook fire place. Next day Grandma went away to stay with her daughter for the winter, she was already going to do that anyway and we took over the cottage for the next few months.
As the winter ended, we went back to Coventry.... just in time to get bombed out again, but this time we stayed.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.