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Coventry Blitz Night - November 14th 1940
(an extract from the life story of Maurice Rattigan)
Arriving home from school on the afternoon of November 14th I found a Bofors A.A. gun and crew sited on Whitley Common, which was unusual, and when dad got home he said it looked like there would be a full moon so we should be prepared for a raid that evening. The enemy preferred to bomb with a full moon for navigation purposes, although it was revealed later that for that big raid they used radio beams to target Coventry.
The sirens sounded about 10 past seven and we went into our back garden shelter little realising we were to spend over 10 frightful hours there.
The planes were soon overhead and the bombs began to fall and the A.A. guns started to loose off against them. The noise never abated all night and it was said afterwards the longest pause of the crescendos was 4 minutes.
About midnight there was a terrific explosion nearby and the blast rushed through the shelter hitting us, blowing out the candles and lifting the slab off the emergency exit.
A parachute mine had landed about 180 yards away at the back of houses in nearby Pegmill Close and near the bottom of Swifts Corner. Cautionously leaving the shelter we could hear screams and crying coming from distant houses which had been damaged. The only damage to our house was a broken window in the kitchen but the blast, and subsequent vacuum, had caused all the curtains in the back bedroom to hang out the small open window. An old large 3 storied house accessed from the lane at the bottom of our street (Shortley Road) was occupied by two families and the mine landed only about 40 yards away. Fortunately it landed on very soft ground and despite the parachute, penetrated deep before exploding. The house was severely damaged and the occupants were advised by Mr.Taylor the local Air Raid Warden to take to a shelter they had in the grounds. A schoolmate of mine, Alan Hobday lived there, and they all moved into the shelter. Later that night it received a direct hit and the eight occupants were all killed. If they had stayed in the house they would have survived.
During most raids we would leave the shelter to go to the toilet, but on this horrific night we used an empty biscuit tin.
Near dawn a dozen or so nearby explosions from a stick of bombs shook our shelter and we could hear debris falling all around. Ignoring the danger we left the shelter and in the moonlight we could see rubble all around us. The side entry was full of debris and we clambered over it to the front of the house where we saw absolute carnage.
The majority of the bombs had fallen in the road outside our house but one had taken the bay window of No.9 and at No.11 opposite the complete front was missing. Two doors away from us at No.4 where the Knibbs family lived, the front of the house was also missing. A house down the street opposite also had the back of the property blown away and a street shelter down the road had had a direct hit but fortunately it was empty.
But not so fortunate were the occupants of the street shelter outside No.2 which was demolished and the eight occupants were all injured. Mrs.Dowling, a local Warden, received a broken leg.
Although I believe some of them may have been dropped earlier that night, altogether 19 bombs fell in Shortley Road. 3 at the top,13 in the street itself and three at the back of the houses opposite. Fortunately the only casualties were the 8 injured in the street shelter.
As we surveying the carnage, three figures emerged from the badly damaged house opposite where the Bowmans lived. The young couple had the wives elderly father staying with them and he stumbled across the rubble with a metal pan on his head. Apparently they had been sheltering in the pantry beneath the stairs when an earlier blast had caused the pots and pans to fall off the shelves and he had put one on his head to prevent further injury. He looked a pathetic figure being lead through the craters and we took him to our shelter.
But there were to be no more bombs dropped on Coventry that night. As we had emerged from our shelter we had heard the engines of the departing plane that had turned our quiet little street into a battlefield. We later found our mantelpiece clock had stopped at 5-30.
At the front, our house has had no windows, no doors, the roof tiles were mostly blown off, every plastered ceiling was down and soot had cascaded down the chimneys. And of course there was no water, gas or electricity. I was later to find that part of a manhole casing had come through the roof and gone clean through my bed and was impaled in the bedroom floor. If I had been in bed ….......

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Somehow or other, fires were lit in back gardens with sticks and rain water was boiled up to make tea and with a cup of tea inside them people were able to take stock of their surroundings.
There was no thought of going to work or school that day. Actually that Friday was Mayor's Day and a school holiday. I was later to find that my school, John Gulson had had the upper story gutted by fire, has had the local Elementary School, Cheylesmore in Mile Lane.
Some of us went up the town and were shocked by the damage that had been caused. Fires were still raging and we were prevented from going into some streets.
At the Walls ice cream depot in Short Street, the Red Cross had set up a comfort station with tea and sandwiches. A photographer took a picture of sisters Eunice and Sheila and me. He said he was from "Picture Post" and we bought a copy for weeks afterwards but the photo never appeared.
Within hours relief came into the city and food vans would often stop at the top of our street to provide soup, sandwiches and tea.
On reflection I don’t know how we actually survived for there was no way Mum could cook for six of us and we couldn't live or sleep in the house. We slept in the shelter as we had been doing for the last couple of months.
Mum's family came to the rescue and invited us to Gloucester to be shared out between our relations.
But we lived in Coventry for the next six days. The night before we were due to leave, Birmingham had an heavy raid and the bombers passing overhead dropped one or two on Coventry, including a very large one in the same crater as the land mine the previous Thursday, and that shook us up a bit.
We had a couple of rabbits. During a previous raid they had escaped their cage and dad going to the toilet had found them in the garden and had put them in the shed until the morning. Alas, in the morning he found they had eaten all his dahlia tubers.
Dad, working for the Corporation Highways Department, had plenty of work on his hands so never came to Gloucester with us. He went to stay with his brother, Uncle Jim, at Diamond Road and the rabbits went with him. We found out years later that the rabbits went into the pot, so he got his own back on them for eating his dahlia tubers.
Mam, the three girls and me left by train for Gloucester via Birmingham but at Stetchford we had to leave the train because there were D.A. bombs on the track and we were put on buses to take us to Saltley. The Castle Bromich area had been heavily hit the previous night and we passed much carnage.
At Saltley we had to wait hours for a train and as waited D.A.bombs were exploding nearby. It was dark when we boarded the train and it kept stopping for alerts. We had brought a kitten with us and it messed in the bag it was in. There were some servicemen in our carriage and they put their greatcoats over the windows in case the glass blew in.
In the small hours of the morning we arrived in Gloucester, and passing the square outside "Bon Marche" we stumbled onto a German Dornier bomber on show for "Wings Week".
Gloucester had not yet had any bombs on it but the Jerries must have been waiting for our arrival for shortly afterwards they had their first raid.
We stayed in Gloucester for about 2 months until our house had been repaired and then returned to Coventry well in time for the April raids.
But that’s another story.

Extract from the life story of Maurice Rattigan

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