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The following is my recollection of the night of November 14th, 1940.

I Spent the War years in Coventry as a young girl.
We lived in Beanfield Avenue, Green Lane, and on the
night of the Blitz my Mother and I went into a previously unused street air raid shelter when the sirens sounded at 6.00 pm. We had our dog with us and were the only people in the shelter at the time. There was no floor to the shelter, only grass. My father, who was an Air Raid Warden, had gone up the road. My uncle, who was living with us at the time, said he could see a parachute and I thought ‘could the Germans be landing?’ a moment later there was a deafening explosion as the parachute mine hit the road, making a crater 30 foot deep and killing 20 of our neighbours including 2 babies, whose bodies were found in the hedge. The debris came crashing down on the roof of our shelter, then a crowd of people came hurtling out into the shelter where we all remained crowded together for 11 hours as the raid continued until 5:30am. We could see some of the enemy aircraft and the sky was bright crimson. I had to spend a penny on the grass outside with bombers going over.

My father had been blown backwards into another shelter by the blast, but luckily was unhurt.
Our house, like most houses in Coventry was only habitable downstairs and as we had no gas electricity or water for sometime, we could only cook over an open fire.
The next day my uncle took us by car to the city and I remember how pleased I was to se the three spires, for which Coventry is famous, still standing .
I remember seeing lines of stunned looking refugees making their way out of the town.

We had more air raids later, but this night remains very vividly in my mind.

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