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This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Tim Davoile on behalf of Doris Hopkins and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My Mum worked for Clark and Clewly, which was in Gas Street. They had a shelter for employees, but they let families use it at nighttime. The shelter was opposite the Gas Tavern and when the sirens went it was a usual thing for the drinkers to use the shelter, but mother didn’t like us children mixing with people who had been drinking. This one night we got to the top of Gas Street and she said ‘we’re not going down there tonight, we’re going to the one on Foleshill Road’. I was desperate to go to the Gas Street shelter, it was much nicer than the Foleshill Road one. Actually, it wasn’t a proper shelter at all, it wasn’t even below ground, it was where they kept the council carthorses. It was open to anybody and you just lay down amongst the horses. When they piddled it went in a channel right past you, you could smell it, it was awful. The next morning as we came out onto Hill Cross a warden stopped us and told us that the Gas Street shelter had received a direct hit and that they’d been digging for us, thinking we were still in there. Our next door but one neighbour, Mrs Rollins (nee, Mrs Night) was badly wounded and the rest of her family were dead, including two daughters and a grandson.

One day, after the all clear had sounded, we were coming out of the Foleshill Road shelter in the broad daylight when the planes returned, they were flying low and they started to machine gun everyone. We were just approaching Bishop Street and we ran into Silver Street to find shelter. Another time Gladys and myself were in Stephen Street, the Standard Factory (later becoming Massey Ferguson) had been bombed earlier in the day and the planes did the same trick of turning the machineguns everybody. We saw all the wounded men bandaged up in the bus on the way to Coventry and Warwickshire hospital.

Sometimes when the sirens went we use to shelter under the stairs at Cherry Street. One night there were 13 of us crammed in there, even Mr Jones (a neighbour) with his little attaché case. He kept all his policies in that. It was a common thing then to carry all your policies around with you. My mother always use to carry a little bag with her policies in, such as burial policies, just in case, that’s how it was then. She use to have to put us in a club and pay tuppence (2d) a week and that would pay out £9 if we died, to bury us. On one occasion they were bombing the gas works and the blast took Gladys’ breath away. She gasped and stopped breathing and if it weren’t for my mother’s quick reaction she would have gone. She kept thumping her in the chest until she started breathing again.

Towards the end of the war young David was kidnapped. He was coming home form school and met some other boys near Wheatly Street. They daubed him with tar and locked him in a large cage, in amongst the bombed buildings and then just left him. When he got home and told us his story, it was so far fetched at first we didn’t really grasp it. He was a bit subdued but he didn’t really make a fuss. Anyway, we called the police and went to find the boys. They were about 14 years old and as part of their punishment they were sent away, a big thing in those days.

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