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

I was eleven. Our Anderson shelter was set much deeper thean was usual, and had a wood and metal door: these improvements came from my grandfather, an ex-soldier of WW1. In one of the first raids on Birmingham, I sat down there on cushions, wrapped in a blanket, reading by the light of a hurricane lamp. About half past nine "This one's for us " said my mother: she pulled the blanket over my head. There was an enormous bang - it felt as though I was exploding. The bomb had dropped just outside the shelter. I remember wondering if I was going to heaven or hell. I came round, I screamed at the sight of my mother and father apparently dead: but they came to, although Father was deaf for six months. I had shrapnel in my eye and facial cuts. There we were, sat in a hole in the ground - the shelter was gone. The neighbours were screaming "Oh my God! They're all dead! They're all dead!" We clambered out, black with dust, to find our shed blazing from an incendiary bomb - Father and a young stranger put it put. The neighbour who had boasted about her First Aid training had hysterics - "A lot of good she was" observed my mother. My kitten had been in the kitchen - Father found her behind the cooker, and walked out with her just before the ceiling fell in. (She was too badly affected by the blast to be kept alive). My swing - based inthree foot of concrete - was still swinging although it had been lifted up and carried to the bottom of the garden. We went to the Fist Aid Post where they washed and recorded our injuries, and gave us tags to wear: I still have the tags.
Our front room had a large bay window, in which stood Mother's sewing machine. On the machine stood a very good statue of Mary and the Baby Jesus that she had won in a raffle at the church. The room was covered in debris, plaster and dust: the bay window, glass, frame and all was completely gone. But the sewing machine and the statue stood unmoved, undamaged - and wthout a speck of dust.

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