大象传媒

I was ten years old when Coventry was blitzed. I lived with my parents in Leamington Spa, about nine miles from the centre of Coventry.

I remember being in the Anderson Air-raid shelter at the bottom of our garden, slightly frightened, but mostly excited. We could hear the German planes going over, and the sounds of the bombs and the anti-aircraft fire. We had gone down to the shelter during a lull in the firing - the biggest risk was being hit by a piece of falling shrapnel from our anti-aircraft shells. At the height of the firing, grandma, who had stayed in the house, decided things were getting too bad, and made her way down to join us.

At one point, there was a very big flash, and we realised that something had landed close by. 鈥淭eeth鈥� dad shouted. We all (except gran.) knew that meant put something between your teeth. This was supposed to lessen the risk of getting a broken ear-drum when the shock wave arrived. After the bang, we could hear grandma fumbling around in the dark - she thought she was supposed to remove her false teeth!

Afterwards, when we were able to get back to the house, we found the back door had been blown open by the blast of what turned out to be a land-mine dropped a hundred yards or so away. That was the only damage we sustained. Farther away from the bomb, two houses across the end of our street fared much worse than us. Their roofs were blown in by the blast, which must have travelled straight down the street.

(After the war my parents made me keep my chemistry set in the shelter. I think they thought I might blow them up. I did do a few experiments with gun-powder!)

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