大象传媒

I was 11 years old when the war started and I started at Nuneaton Grammar School although many masters left to go to the war so that we could not learn Latin or German or do Woodwork or Metalwork, although we did do boxing!

This excerpt from 鈥淣uneaton in the 30s and 40s鈥� has been published in the Nuneaton & North Warwickshire Family History Society Journal, Editor Pat Boucher 鈥� email: editor@nnwfhs.org.uk.

鈥淭he bombing started in 1940 and Coventry was a prime target, but on the 17th May 1941 Nuneaton took that role. My father was at work and my Uncle Joe at Crewe later read a report of my father risking his life to shunt ammunition wagons to safety away from burning coaches. Amazingly whilst High Explosive bombs, land mines and incendiaries were raining down on the town, my mother and I were in bed fast asleep! Bill Hambley our neighbour was beating on our front door with both fists for fifteen minutes before he could wake us! He then told us to shelter under the stairs until there was a lull, at which stage we scurried into the Hambleys' Anderson Shelter at the bottom of their garden whilst Bill went back to patrol the street for incendiaries.

A house up the street was in fact gutted by fire and Bill, who climbed a drainpipe to check that no one was inside, got a nasty electric shock and came to lie down for a short time. The bombs whistled down, seemingly exploding all around us, Dolly Hambley cursing the Germans fairly politely and it was frightening, but we were in the safest place. At last, as dawn broke, the siren sounded the all clear and we came out for the universal remedy 鈥� a cup of tea, brewed with the aid of a Primus Stove as gas and electricity were cut off. Many of the roofs had holes in them. I thought ours had escaped but on going into my mother鈥檚 bedroom I found a large hole where a heavy rock had smashed through the roof and ceiling onto my mother鈥檚 bed and bounced onto the floor. Had Bill Hambley not awakened us, my mother would almost certainly have been killed.

Later on Tony Collett, one of my classmates, came round and suggested we went down to school to see if we could retrieve our books as Church Street and the School had been badly damaged. I got my bike and satchel and we set off. We couldn鈥檛 do much riding because the streets were littered with debris: glass and broken bricks and a pervading smell of plaster dust. The town centre was inaccessible so we went via Newtown Road and Wheat Street. The school was in a mess and we got into our classroom to find wooden beams at grotesque angles and our desks overturned with books spilling out. We sorted through and picked out our books from the debris, cramming them into our satchels. I reluctantly gave up trying to find my large atlas and we returned to our bikes when we noticed some men down in the school field. They saw us and gesticulated fiercely. We beat a quick retreat down King Edward Road only to meet an irate Air Raid Warden who demanded to know where we had been. We explained that we had been to retrieve our textbooks. 鈥淐an鈥檛 you bloody well read?鈥� he asked, pointing to a piece of wood measuring at most six inches by four, propped against two bricks in the middle of the road. The chalked inscription read 鈥淒anger 鈥� Unexploded Bomb鈥�! (*) The men who had waved at us were the Bomb Disposal Squad. Had it gone off whilst we were in our classroom we would have been buried. We went on our giggling.

(*) actually a landmine!

Alan Croshaw

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