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This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Angela Triggs of CSV Cov & Warks Action Desk on behalf of Jean Taylor. The author is aware of the site's conditions.

All my teenage years were spent in the war so what I missed was :

1. Clothes
We had clothes rationeing with a points system. So one period, you could, perhaps buy some underwear and the next period, maybe, a coat. My herioc mother used to give us girls her clothing points because she said "I've had my life, vlothes are important to the young". At the time, I suppose, like teenages today, you are so wrapped up in your own wants you dont really consider other people. For Mum 'make do and mend' was her Mantra.

2. Lights
ThenUk was toally blacked out for 6 years. Imagine living without lights - Air Raid Wardens would patrol the streets and you faced a large fine if so much as a chink of light was showing. If you used a torch it had to be very small and pointed at the ground.

3. Holidays
Life as work and bed. Britiains' costline was covered in barbed wire because we all knew, down to the last child, that, sooner or later, in order to defeat the British, Hitler would have to invade - not 'if', just 'when'.

One way to get a change was to volunteer to the Ministry of agriculture and Fisheries to work on the laned for your 2 weeks annual holiday. My boyfriend and I volunterred and were sent to Cornwall to pick potatoes. Now, this was the farthest point you can get from Coventry - Lands End. We were given rail vouchers and travelled for 14 hours in a packed train, sitting on our suitcases outside the toilets (ugh) surrounded by young soldiers on their way to die. The pay was miniscule, but we had dun with other young people, living on bread, sardines, and rice pudding for 2 weeks. Once was a novelty ... but for 6 years ....

3. Cakes, sweets, biscuits and real eggs
We had a sweet ration on points, but I used to give mine up to Brian, my youngest brother, who was 5 at the time. He would exchange is exploding sausages in turn to me. We hd dried egg powder Ithink, courtesy of the Anericans. Mum used to try to make a cake with inferior blackish flour, no sugar and dried eggs - the effort was commendible if inedible !

On the night 14/15th November 1940 the Germands bombarded Coventry for 12 hours non-stop in order to destroy us. It was my 14th birthday and I was in a deep underground shelter with 300 other families. The smell was appalling from the makeshift latrines (2 buckets). I was in charge of my sister who had been assaulted in the blackout by being hit on the head with a crowbar (the assailant got 3 years in prison). She suffered the rest of her life and died at 39. Her husband had just been picked up off the beaches at Dunkirk and was suffering horrendous shell shock. For a 14 yr old girl to have this responsibility ... but in truth I didn't have time to feel afraid - you just had to get on with it. The Germans practically wiped out of city structure, but not our spirit. A new word entered the English language that night - 'Coventrated' - the destruction of an open city.

Thank God we lost no immediate family, though my poor brother in law ( a member of the Highland Regiment ... known as the ladies from Hell') never recovered from his experiences at Dunkirck and sadly died of a brain tumour at 52.

I had recently won a scholarship to a local secretarial college where I had started on 2nd September 1940. The morning after the blitx my mother tried to dissudade me from going citing that no buses were running, but off I went to the city centre where I saw things that no 14 yr old girl should have seen. Exhausted fire fighters, a destroyed 14th century cathedral consumed by flames, piles of bodies in torn blankets, sobbing women .... I had started college with 27 classmates - after that night we had only 17 - what happened to the other 10 one could only surmise.

Everybody of my generation knows exactly where they were when the Second Front (as we called is D-Day) was opened. I worked in a munitions factory and it was lunchtime. The announcement came over the radio and we all stood up and cheered - we had waited 4 long years for this to happen. Although 250,000 soldiers were rescused from the hell hole that was Dunkirk - all their weaponds artillery and equipment had been left behind. This is why the government asked everyone to give up their saucepans, gates, railings, kitchen utensils, - anything you had that was made of metal went to make spitfires, guns etc.

The Yanks were very popular - especially with the young ladies. With their smart uniforms and the funny way they spoke - and the chocolate of course. Stockings and chewing gum were a big wow too. My boyfriend , was prevented by his reserved occcupation (machine tool setter) from going to war - so I missed out on all these exotic encounters. (drat and double drat!)

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