大象传媒

I was born in Nuneaton in 1936. Our back garden ran to the tow path of the Coventry Canal. One of my very earliest memories is of lying in bed and hearing the horses going by, their brasses jingling as they passed on the way taking coal to the Courtaulds鈥� factory, taking load after load of coal to keep the boilers stoked up. These deliveries went on for fist light until dusk, backwards and forwards between factory and pit.. Overnight the boats moored near the Boot Bridge and the horses were put in a nearby field. During the war, many services switched to horse drawn vehicles, including the refuse carts, as petrol was very scarce (rationed). One large wagon which used to visit Nuneaton Flour Mills was steam driven, and was very noisy and smelly.

My Dad was now an ARP Warden, when a raid was on he had to check to make sure everyone had gone into the communal shelters, which were sited in Fitton Street Schools playing field. These shelter s were underground and had electric light and wooden benches for about a dozen people, each side of the central aisle, making around two dozen people per shelter. At one end was a long iron ladder, which was an escape route in case the normal entrance got blocked. As a child I was always scared in case we had to climb it, but thankfully we never did. The Wardens and other men used to stand outside until a bomb was head coming down, then they use to dash inside (as a dead warden was no use to anyone). Once or twice a month, my Dad and most other men had to spend all night at their places of work on Fire Watching duty.

We used to start school for a while at nine thirty a.m., because of Double Summer Tine (GMT plus two hrs). We had to take to take our gas masks with us or get sent home. At Fitton Street school, children were taken from three years of age and sometimes younger. These 鈥渂abies鈥� as we older ones would call them, were put to bed on little camp beds in a classroom every afternoon. Woe betide us if we made any noise passing along the corridor next to them. One a week when lunch time came, I had to run down to Queens Road and take my Mum鈥檚 place in a queue at a cake shop. I would be given the money and a list and she would return home to get lunch. We had school milk, poured out for us into mugs. Sometimes in the summer it would be sour by the time we got it. We were still expected to drink it, however.

My home life was very happy. My Dad was too old to be called up and anyway was in a reserved occupation, so I had both my parts at home. At one time, we were in the shelters most nights, and I had a all in one garment called siren suit, put on over my nightwear and saved me having to be dressed before being taken out. We listened to the radio a great deal, especially the nine o clock news, preceded by the first few bars of Beethoven鈥檚 Fifth Symphony, then Lily Bulero, which we called 鈥渋nto battle鈥�. The idea being that, when we heard this call sign, we knew we were listening to the 大象传媒. We also sometimes hear Lord HawHaw, William Joyce, making propaganda broadcasts from Germany. My Dad along with many others had two allotments, and 鈥渄ug for victory鈥�. This also meant we were never short of fresh vegetables.

Around Christmas time, my Dad made various toys to order 鈥� dolls鈥� furniture, metal cranes, and so on. Toys were hard to come by, so every little helped. I was lucky enough at the start of the war to be bought a huge dolls鈥� pram and doll. I was the only child in the area to have one of these. We didn鈥檛 feel deprived because war was a way of life to use and we couldn鈥檛 remember much form before the war.

The Blitz was an awful night long raid, which left the centre of Nuneaton gutted as well as damage all around up to several miles away. First of all, fire bombs were dropped followed by wave after wave of heavy bombers. When we went into the shelter, it was as bright as day, owing to all the buildings which were on fire, and we were in the shelters until 6 in the morning. My Aunts were at he Long Shoot and sat up and watched the raid all night, remembering their relatives in Nuneaton. When the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� sounded, they got dressed and walked into the town to see what had happened. When they reached Bond Gate, they could not get any further, because of rubble and unexploded bombs. So they walked round Attleborough Road and the Pingles to get to Coton. They reached my Mothers oldest sister鈥檚 house first, and that had been bombed. Then they came to us, we had only minor damage. While the rid was going on, my Aunt鈥檚 husband who was in the Home Guard, was ferrying children to safety under the Boot Bridge over the canal. When he got home, his house had gone, also the Methodist Church and the Coop shop, with many other properties.

Toward the end of the war, the shelter on the school field started to fill with water. We had a Morrison shelter in our house. This was a steel cage as big as a table, and designed to take the weight of the house above should it collapse. Our kitchen was small and we didn鈥檛 have much room left when the shelter was installed.

Also towards the end of the war, a German aeroplane was shot down and landed opposite the present entrance of the George Elliott Hospital (at the time this was a lot of temporary buildings, used for burn victims from the London blitz). I was taken to sent he wreckage next morning. I can remember the crater with the tail plane sticking out of it. Some of the crew had baled out and were rounded up in Nuneaton.

One bomb embedded itself under Coton Road without exploding. The town had to go into the shelter while it was defused. (end 鈥� 8.06.05)

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