大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CVS / 大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of May Walker and has been added to the site with her permission. May fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was living in Birmingham but I worked in Coventry when Coventry was heavily bombed by the Germans. My husband, Alfred King was on fire duty the night they bombed. I heard the bombers overhead, but did not know what it was about until the next morning.
My job was to go around and empty cash registers.
I went into Coventry to remove the cash from the cash registers. It was impossible to locate the streets. Not just one or two, but all the houses in the streets were flattened. You couldn't walk up the streets. Coventry cathedral also went that night.
I tried to contribute and help. The only thing I could do was to try and comfort people. There were many people injured. They barricaded the streets because there were so many people injured. I went back day after day trying to contribute. Some of the time I just wondered around.
I never found any of the cash registers. They were all destroyed by the bombs.
It was the worst day of the war for me. I'm 87 years old now and I don't like thinking about it. It is a very bad memory.
My husband continued on fire watch. I would be worried each night that he would come home safely. He served abroad afterwards and survived the war, but died of a heart attack when he was only 36 years old. I was left to bring up two children alone.

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