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This story has been submitted to the People’s war site by Anne Wareing on behalf of Richard Mason and has been added to the site with his permission…

There are two stories of my time in Coventry during the Second World War that stand out in my memory. They was the occasion when as a ten year old boy I was going to the cinema one Sunday night. I was with my mother and father; we were walking to the cinema along a road that passed the Armstrong Siddley aircraft factory on one side and the Coventry cemetery on the other. Suddenly my father said to me, ‘Don’t look up .’ Being curious I did just that,I looked up and to my horror, I saw coffins and skeletons hanging from the trees. The Germans had bombed the cemetery instead of the factory; it was a sight that I have never forgotten.

My second story concerns a friend of ours called David Stevenson, who at that time was in the Royal Navy. He was on leave and this particular night there was a heavy air raid on and we were all in the shelter underground. All that is except David Stevenson, his mother said to my father, ‘Our David isn’t here.’ My father who was on Air Raid Warden patrol said he would go round to their house to see if he was there. After much knocking on the door and shouting his name he woke him from a deep sleep and my father persuaded him to go down into the shelter. The morning after the raid David and his family went back to their house, which to their amazement was no longer there. It had suffered a direct hit from a high explosive bomb and was completely flattened to the ground.

Afterwards David said it was my father he had to thank for his life.

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