大象传媒

As a 12 year old school boy, I joined my Mother and Father, along with our next door neighbours and their 2 young children in our air-raid shelter, in our garden when the air-raid sirens sounded at about 7pm on 14th November 1940.

We had had to go to the shelter on a number of previous occasions, but nothing much had happened. We were soon to find this night was different.

We soon heard the crack of the anti-aircraft guns and the thud of bombs dropping, but as we lived on the outskirts of Coventry most of them seemed some way away. although some seemed to be only in nearby streets.

The noise continued for hours, although we didn't have any high explosive bombs in our street, we did have a number of incendiary bombs, one on the house next door, and oe on the house opposite, as well as others further along the street.

My father joined other neighbours with their stirrup pumps and buckets of water and sand, and tyhey were quickly able to extinguish them and restrict the damage to a minimum. I do't know whether they realised the danger they were in.

By the early hours of the morning the bombs became less, and we heard the "all clear" siren go about 6am.

We returned to the house to find that thankfully we were in one piece, although we had lost the electricity, gas and water supplies, which we had replaced over the next 4-5 days. My father was keen to get to work to see what had happened and said that I should try to get to school to see what the position was.

I set off on my bicycle at about 8am and soon found that I couldn't get along some of the streets that I would normally use, because of barriers for uexploded bombs and damage. I had to keep making changes of direction to by-pass streets that were closed.

Although my school was on the other side of the city, I did not have to go through the city centre, which I should not have been able to do because of the damage.

I still remember getting off my bicycle in Stoney Stanton Road - one of the main roadsinto the city, and watching a row of cottages burning - nobody seemed to be showing any interest and I wondered where the occupants were. Of course, the fire brigade were overwhelmed and by then, had no water anyway.

When I eventually got to school, I appeared to be the only one there, so I just turned round and went home.

When I got home, I looked around the garden and street for anti-aircraft shell splinters and claimed the fin of the incendiary bomb from our neighbour's house.

There were other small raids, but nothing like that again, fortunately for us.

I didn't go to school again intil I was evacuated to Lincoln on the 8th January 1941, but thats a whole new story!

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