大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Chloe Broadley of the CSV 大象传媒 Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Joan Annear and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

We had gone to Bulkington to be out of the city. There were shelters on both sides of the village - it was a good walk between them. This night we went to the nearest: a man opened the door - a woman in front and my mother got in, then he shut the door! My Father and I, a little girl, were left outside. We set off for the other shelter, across the fields. We heard planes ovehead -"Daddy, look at the pretty lights" - they were target flares: the planes came very low - we ran towards a little copse - Father flung me to the ground and covered me with his body. I could see little bits of the ground spurting up around us. I know now that we were being machine-gunned, but then my concern was that I had lost my dolly and one of my shoes. The last thing I remember of that night was being inside Father's coat, it smelled of his tobacco. Then I must have slept.
I remember very well the hated whistling bombs. The plane's engine, the terrible whistle as the bomb came down, and the silence just before it hit its target. it always seemed just above your head, and the sigh of relief when the explosion came elsewhere was loud and long. That bomb I hated and was terrified of.
In Bulkington there was an elderly gentleman, who lived in the same house as us, who used to take in servicemen suffering with shellshock - they reacted fearfully to bangs etc. Mother used to "mother" them. There was one, a young blond man, who used to hold his head and rock to and fro. One night he asked Mother if he could take me outside and lift me on to his shoulders. When he did I saw all orange and red, like Bonfire Night. "That," he told me "is your city, burning. When you get older, remember that you saw your city burning." That was on November 14th. Later Mum took me to see the Cathedral ruins. She just stood in silence with tears running down her face: our big Cathedral gone, it was unbelievable.
Father, Mother and I used to walk down Foleshill Road to a pub we knew. Nearby was a big factory with shelters (whichI think are still there) which were divided into small square "rooms" with benches along three sides. One night the siren went, we went down one of the factory shelters. After a while Mum left me with a lady she knew and went to see if Dad, who was fire watching, was all right. Ther was a huge jolt - the shelter shook, the lights went out a bomb had hit the next "room"! I heard Mum cry out "Joan! Our Joan!" A big man picked me up and carried me out. They turned our faces away from the sight of the damage. I had seen some big black bags before, but Mum told me they were to hold people's belongings when their houses were bombed. In another Foleshill shelter I made friends with a girl two years older than myself, we used to sit and chat. Then she was sent back to her own shelter - that night it was hit.
One of my cousins always brought me a present when he came home on leave. During a raid he went into a bombed house and got some childrenout; he then went back in for others - the house was hit again and he was killed. He has a memorial tree in the Memorial Park.
We knew a musical family: we used to go to listen to them - the father on the piano, the mother on her very expensive violin. All the children could play too. They had their own shelter, but one night they found that they had gone down without the precious violin - they always took that into the shelter with them. So the mother and father both went into the house to fetch it. The house was hit by a bomb: the children were orphaned.

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