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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Judith Harridge of Leamington Library on behalf of Bill Ingram and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
I was transferred up to Baginton — the other side of the airport. I was a radio engineer and they wanted them up there more than anywhere else. One day I was working in Warwick Road (Coventry) at Marconi’s place and the next day at Baginton I was trying to make sense of the Whitley Bomber. To be quite honest it was better to be in Coventry than on an aerodrome with bombs all round the place — you were safer. You couldn’t work very well on nights for thinking about your family in the air raid shelters. That was when you saw all the nasty stuff — there was a whole family in the bottom of a crater near the Daimler Works and you couldn’t get down to them. It was just a big clay hole. The fire brigade managed to disappear from one of their fires and drag them out with a rope and they had lived nearby. And that was a family out a house who’d disappeared. Anyway when I got home they (my family) were all in the shelter plus a load of other people — talk about a welcome home when you’ve got a family in an air raid shelter. I was about the only fellow who could use his arms and legs at the time to dig a shelter, me and my neighbour Fred. His wife was from way up Durham way and they used to share the shelter. All that was said in the shelter during one of the raids was ‘Hey Fred, Fred are you comfortable?’ and he said, ‘What’s the matter?’, and she said, ‘Are you comfortable?’ and he said, ’ Yeah it’ll do’ and she said, ‘ Well if you’re that comfortable change places with me!’ I don’t know what would have been the result if we’d have had a direct hit — an irish stew would have been found or shepherd’s pie!
After the raids started I walked home in the first gap right across town in the dark and then when I got home the wife and two daughters were in the shelter and I just got home when the ‘all clear’ sounded. I shifted the front of the air raid shelter — it was a loose piece of shelter so that the blast didn’t come right through. And there was the eldest daughter Wendy she was standing with a brick in her hand saying ‘somebody’s house, dad’ and the brick had come through the front of the shelter but had only bruised her knee. There was no sign of the family whose house it was. The door wouldn’t open to our house — it was a different shape to the doorframe!
I got home one day and there was a fellow shouting in Villa Road ‘ Ha Ha’ and yelling ‘ You missed me you bastard’. He was in his pyjamas standing in the middle of Villa Road. I said ‘What’s up Charlie?’ and he said ‘the buggers have missed me!’ He said, ‘ I knew I was on the end of one of them when I heard the engine note change’. He was the only one left of his family.
When it was the blitz I’d met a policeman who’d said ‘I think they’ll give us a rest tonight’. I said, ‘we’ll do what we do every other night and play it by ear’. Anyway it started! I lived by the side of the Daimler Works which was up along the railway lines so they’d got a good target. They came in from the south west over Coventry and then dropped hundreds and hundreds of incendiary bombs all down the Daimler Works setting fire to the place. Well that lit up everywhere. They came in again. There were fires all over the place. I got the car out and said to the wife, 'Let’s go over to Fillongley' (that’s where my mother lived). I had a Herman Minx a super duper thing in those days. The ‘sunshine roof’ had just come on the market. I took the family over to my mother’s place and left them and came back for the neighbours. I saw the local vicar — he was an ex-padre. He was in his element as it was all part of his younger days in the first world war. Between us we got the headmaster of the school to open up the school and I just went back and forwards into Coventry and took out anyone who was there. On the way back about the fifth trip I had a bomb go off behind me and that left a great big hole in the road (by the Wallace Pub in Radford on the Tamworth Road). Quite a lot of debris came into the car. There were no lights, no nothing. It was just pitch black. When I got back there were about three men left and I said what do you want to do. They thought of their wives and wanted to be together.
When I got to the Shepherd and Shepherdess there was a god almighty bang behind me and a flash and there was another hole in the road so I couldn’t get out. I’d got a hole in front of me that I had to find a way round and I couldn’t go back. It took me about half an hour to get out of this going up side entrances and along the backs of the gardens where the dustmen use. I noted where I was and I eventually got through across somebody’s garden. On the way back in there was an awful bang near me and I thought I’d had it and there was somebody’s chimney in the back seat! It had come straight through the roof! And that was the end of the car. I had two flat tyres and a big hole in my roof! When I got back the policeman who was doing all the marshalling said, ‘I shouldn’t go and look at your house just yet Bill, come and have a cup of tea’. I just glanced at the house with no roof on.
I was glad I’d taken them.

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