大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Brian McCarney from the CSV Coventry & Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Mary Moore and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

We lost two houses in the bombing of Coventry. The first house in Dickens Road came down in November 1940; and the second, in Cheveral Avenue came down in April 1941.

The stairs in both houses saved our lives.
When we were rescued from the first house, where we had hidden under the stairs, we walked to my Aunts' house in Foleshill to tell them that we were all right. We then walked to my Grandparents' house in Bell Green. We stayed with them until my mother managed to rent a house near the Daimler in Radford.

In the house in Radford my Mum and I were huddled together under the stairs, while my Father was on firewatch. He called in to see if we were all right there and Mum asked him to come under with us for a few moments. He had just come in when the house came down around us. The three of us were trapped for five hours. We could hear people shouting as they searched for survivors in the rubble. We shouted back but no one heard. We started to smell gas. Finally, they heard us and began to dig us out. I was passed through the hole. Mum said she would need a bigger hole because she was having a baby. She said they dropped her back "like a sack of coal".
When they finaly got her out they threw the pick down to my Dad to dig himself out.

They put Mum into an ambulance because they though the birth was imminent but she said that she was all right and that she wanted her little girl. They took her to a house across the road where I was being cared for. I told these people that I had "blitz muck in my hair". (I learnt later that the lady who lived next door, and her baby were killed in the raid.)

My parents went to an office in town where they were given 拢10. They used the money to kit me out in new clothes and bought me a teddy.

We spent the next few days at Harvest Hill, and then the next two years with my Grandparents. We were given a council house on the condition that we returned to our old house when it was rebuilt.

We returned in November 1947 and I still live there with my 95 year old mother - 48 years later!

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