大象传媒

Edgar George French October 1989

THE BLITZ OF COVENTRY
__________________________

( COVENTRATION )

TO MY GRANDCHILDREN

As I sit and gather my thoughts to go back almost 50 years I feel a slight
shiver. I can hear the wail of sirens , the hiss , whoosh and crump of the bombs
and droning of the deadly bombers. It's still there locked in my head , as it is
in many of my fellow citizens.

My decision to write this account came about as a result of a conversation
with my daughter-in-law Linda. We were talking last week and somehow the subject of the Blitz came up. Linda's father, Slim, had his parents, grandparents and other
relatives killed in the Blitz in Castle Street and , as a result , never talked about it !
Linda did not know that I had experienced it .

My first thoughts are that , as time has passed , people have tended to glamourise
this event and be nostalgic about the feelings of camaraderie , togetherness ,
assistance and support we gave each other (By God we needed it !)

Please believe me it was not an event that should be celebrated . Commemoration
is a more appropriate term to use , the only people to celebrate are those of us
who survived to tell the tale .

It was an evil act , perpetrated on a defenceless city with a civilian population of about 250,000 crowded into a closeley packed mainly ancient , city . In all , the actions
over a period of about 2 years up to 3,000 people were killed and many thousands
made homeless .

The city centre was completely destroyed , resulting in many commercial and industrial
organisations re-siting their operations away from Coventry , with a resultant loss of jobs and business the city could ill afford .

It was said of Coventry that there were more bicycles per head of population than
anywhere else so the population moved mainly by bikes and trams . The few buses
ran to areas beyond the tram lines , cars were a rare extravagance .

I lived at 12 Clara Street , Stoke , Coventry , with my mother , brothers Alf , Charlie
and Len and sisters Gwen and Edwina . 12 Clara Street ran parallel to the Binley
Road and was on the south side of the road . It was about 50 yards from the junction
of Kingsway , Humber Road and Binley Road .

At the time of the main raid on November 14th. I was 17 years old and employed as a gear cutter in the middle shop at Armstrong Siddeley Motors Ltd., Parkside ( The
Deasey ) . The normal dayshift was 8.00 a.m. to 5.45 p.m. and that was my shift that day - check no. 2027 .

Thuesday , 14th. November was just a normal sort of day for that period and time of
of year . I arrived home on my bike shortly before 6.00 p.m. , washed , changed and had my evening meal . Alf and May were engaged and had set a date for their wedding early in 1941 . Mother had agreed that they could live with us - no houses
were available for young couples when they married . We had helped Alf to decorate
the middle room downstairs and were in the act of finishing decorating the back bedroom but Alf ran out of paper . He would have to buy another roll .

On that same day , Alf took delivery of a new bedroom suite from Owen Owens .
They said they had run out of storage space and needed the room . Anyway , we sat
and talked about his coming wedding and so on .

At about 7.00 p.m. the sirens went - well it had gone many times before , in fact , when on nightshift we were stopped many times and production was halted while we went to the shelter . We had heard the bombers and the occasional bomb fall so we were a bit complacent .

Anyway , about 7.15 or 7.30 p.m. we heard the thrum thrum of the German Bombers and soon a continuous swishing sound ? With that we went upstairs . On looking from the back bedroom window we could see a bluish white light like a curtain which started just beyond Stoke Aldermoor then Whitley and proceeded to Cheylesmore on to Earlsdon and on and on . On going to the front bedroom window we observed the same from Walsgrave on and on through the north side of the city . The city was ringed by incendiaries , a prime marker for what was to follow . As we watched , the white light changed in patches to yellow orange and red . The fires had started . We knew now that we had a serious raid on our hands and went round and opened all the sash windows , top and bottom to leave a gap . This surely saved our windows , we had no shatter resistant tape on our glass . We also opened all doors .

Most of our neighbours went to stay in the shelters on Gosford Green . We did not .
I well remember some taunting others by singing "Run Rabbit Run" which led to a big row between them .

By now we were in a situation where high explosive bombs were being dropped , some with a whoosh and bang , some with a screech and bang , some with a whistle and bang and then incendiaries dropped all around us . Some in the street - we put them out with earth . One went through the bedroom of Miss Southerns at No: 10 next door , the room was filled with feathers from her mattress . Mr. Holley a few doors away had passed away and his body was in the coffin in the front room . An incendiary went in there and was extinguished .

One fell into the butcher's shop on the corner of Kingsway and Mr. Hanson , our Street Warden , asked permission to break the window with a spade to get at it . Mr.
Hanson lived at No: 16 or 18 and an incendiary was in his roof close to the downpipe . We did not have a ladder so he climbed the drain pipe with a bucket of sand in the crook of his arm , put it out and then scooped it out into the road .

Smoke was everywhere , like Guy Fawkes , only thicker , red flames filled the sky , there were constant bangs , bumps and thuds , whistling , screeching and whooshing .
Up in the sky the searchlights criss-crossed and waved searching . Once I saw that they had one in their light but he got away . The lights on occasion touched a barrage balloon and one was set on fire and fell flaming to the ground - it may have been the one in Gosford Park .

When the raid started it was very dark outside but during the course of the night the moon rose , it was a full moon and by midnight it was right overhead . The sky was clear and outside it seemed to us to be almost daylight , apart from the smoke and red glow and search-lights . It was the sort of cold clear night which would normally produce a frost but there was no frost due to the heat rising from the fires . Included in the noise and confusion of the bombardment when outside we could feel and hear the debris falling out of the sky - earth , stone , brick , tiles and shell fragments from the Ac Ac , some fell with a whirring sound indicating that they were spinning like the aeroplane seeds from trees in the Autumn , these could be heard hitting the roofs and ground all around . We had no tin hats so we had to take cover from time to time in particularly heavy fall out .

During the first hour or two I was shaking with fright and excitement but it wore off as I became accustomed to the conditions but I was still conscious of the danger . I very clearly remember Alf and I shaking hands and saying goodbye to each other . We were in the back bedroom looking out of the window and we saw a stick of bombs exploding coming towards us , but the next one in the stick went over the top of us .

One exploded so close it blew the curtains horizontal , lifted the rainwater tank which splashed on the outhouse roof and shook the house , even with the windows open it was a miracle that no panes broke .

After midnight or maybe 1.00 a.m. in the morning we weren't watching the time - a lull in the bombardment fell so we went for a walk around the locality to see how much damage there was . There was debris and broken windows all round the locality.
When we arrived at the Kingsway , Humber Road , Binley Road junction we saw the bomb craters . Some in the shelters on Gosford Green (adjacent to Humber Road ) , one large crater smack in the middle of Binley Road about 25 yards towards the City from the crossroad . The edge of the crater was into the footpath both sides of the road , the tram lines sticking up at right angles - trams never ran again in Coventry . One 25 yards down Humber Road also lifting both footpaths , one in the paddling pool on Stoke Green , right in the middle ! One had demolished one half of a semi - detached house which faced the end of Clara Street but was in Marlborough Road . This house had a high gable front , it looked like a knife had cut down from the peak of the gable to floor level , the other half looked virtually undamaged and they continued to live in it . When we went closer we could see a mirror hanging on the wall of what had been the living room and several pictures hanging , together with fireplaces in the bedrooms and wall-paper , all now open to the elements . This house , like many others , has been re-built and , if you look at it now , you would never know it is a newer half . Someone in the family has a photo of it and it looks grotesquely out of balance with the right side missing . ( This was the stick of bombs Alf and I had seen from the bedroom . )

Whilst we were at the crossroads an army type ambulance , dark green with a canvas back and red cross , came down Binley Road from the City . He couldn't get over the edge of the craters so we had to push him over both Binley Road and Humber Road craters . After it had gone , whilst we were making our way home , up Humber Road a delayed action bomb went off among the shelters on Gosford Green . A big bang - we put our hands over our heads , crouched down and the debris fell all around us . Fortunateley , only light dirt hit us . We went home then , we thought the raid was over .

Like hell it was! After about 30 or 45 minutes lull it all started again . We had noticed that the Ac Ac gunfire had increased before the lull , but afterwards it intensified further and the sound of the bombs plus the increased anti aircraft fire was deafening .

I and one brother , looking north out of the front window , saw an aircraft on fire flying east to west . It disappeared behind the roofs , but we saw a glare in the sky towards Bedworth and assumed it had crashed . We had only momentary satisfaction about it . All through the night we could see little orange flashes of shellbursts in the sky , with the thump thump of the concussions and some silly bugger (we thought at the time ) was driving a train up and down the line close by , going chuff , chuff , chuff , toot , toot . We discovered later that it ws carrying an anti aircraft gun . No wonder we thought the gunfire was sometimes louder than others !

Sometime during the night Mr. Hanson , the Warden told us not to handle incendiaries which fell in the road or gardens or anywhere where they couldn't set anything alight . This was to protect us . We had a report that some had exploded and seriously injured people trying to put them out .

Between our house , No. 12 and next door , No. 14 , there was a covered entry about 2'6" wide and 8' high . When a lot of muck fell we would run into it for protection .
I ran in once on my own , squatted against the wall , lit a fag ( one of many that night ) . I heard a whirring sound , it fell hit the pavement , went clink , ting , ting up the blue brick floor and touched my hand . It was warm and I picked it up . When I took it in the house I saw it was the nose cone of a shell .

At the end of the night I had picked up an unexploded incendiary bomb , it was about 2 1/2" diameter and 18" long with fins . I gave it to the warden . Also I kept 6 incendiary fins , 2 shell nose cones and various other pieces of shrapnel . When I came home from the Navy after the war I could not find them .

All night long our front door was wide open . Mother was making tea all night for a stream of Wardens , Police , Firemen etc . I asked Alf last week - how did she get all that tea due to the rationing ? He told me that mother had her tea delivered and one day the delivery man turned up , he had been called up with his mate and didn't want his tea stock taken over . Mother bought a large stock , as much as she could afford .

Perhaps we were getting used to it , but , somehow it seemed less intense close to us , but it continued on until about 6.00 a.m. and at about 6.30 a.m. absoluteley shattered we retired to bed . I can't remember hearing the sirens sound the All Clear !!

At about 10 o'clock the following morning someone shouted up the stairs . It was a policeman with May . The front door was left open . She had come down from Upper Stoke to see if we were alright . When she arrived , both ends of the road were roped off and she was told that there was an unexploded bomb close by and we had all been evacuated . We asked about the bomb . It was estimated to be about 50 lbs and had fallen into a corner of a garage at the back of a house on the corner of Kingsway , Binley Road east side . This was about 25 yards from the back of the
house , but we had had enough and decided to stay put . It was about a week before they removed it .

We had no water and no electricity . Mother cooked on the coal range in the kitchen and our water came from the rainwater tank over the coalhouse and toilet . This was for about a week , then they delivered in tankers , then from a standpipe and , finally , after about ten weeks , water was restored . The power came back on after about six weeks . We were lucky compared to others .

Anyway , at about 11.00 a.m. on Friday , 15th. November , I decided to go to the Deasy to see what the work situation was . I had to walk as there was so much debris on the roads and pavements that riding a bike was impossible . I made my way along the Binley Road , smoke everywhere , but few people , turned into Gulson Road - broken glass and debris everywhere and an acrid smell - my eyes were smarting ( like last night ) . All the way up Gulson Road on both sides were parked single deck buses converted to ambulances with stretchers . There did not seem to be anyone looking after them . They went right up to London Road . I still wonder if they were full of bodies ! I have never tried to find out .

When I got to London Road a lorry with soldiers came past . They were sitting on a bomb which they were taking to Whitley Common to blow up . I walked up Parkside to the main gates of the Deasey . The gateman told me that , due to severe damage
there would be no work and to come back on Monday . I returned home past the buses , wondering about them .

Around 1.30 p.m. I decided to go to see my mate , Kerry Lake and his mother . They lived in Sadler Road , Radford - the other side of the city . Kerry was called up into the Army about the same time as I was called up into the Navy in 1942 . He told me after the war that he was a trained marksman ( sniper ) and , on several occasions , he had been left behind in retreat as rearguard to harass the enemy , but he had a breakdown , started shaking and crying , so he threw his special rifle with telescopic sights away and walked off . He was picked up and courtmarshalled for desertion in the face of the enemy , found guilty and put in the glasshouse .

I have a photograph of him in a magazine with his rifle entering a village in Tunisia .

Anyway , I set off along Binley Road , turned into Far Gosford Street and was stopped by a soldier with a rifle . I explained where I was going and why and he let me proceed .

Far Gosford Street and Gosford Street were two of the main shopping streets in Coventry at that time and as I walked down the road the pavements were covered with debris from shop fronts blown out onto them . I saw clothes , shoes , jewellery etc . scattered as I passed by . There were soldiers every two hundred yards to prevent looting . Funnily enough , although there were more people around than in the morning , there weren't that many . A lot of the buildings were smoking inside with occasional flames inside some , these were burning out . There were fire hoses on the ground , flat and empty . Firemen and Wardens were in little groups here and there as I went along . There was no water to extinguish the fires !! I got past the Morris and somewhere between the Morris and Cox Street on my right hand side of the road a factory wall had blown into the road . Inside was a mass of drab green motorcycles all tossed in a jumble by a bomb . I thought they were Francis Barnett bikes .

Walking was now becoming increasingly difficult due to the increasing size and amount of debris everywhere . As I passed the Gaumont Cinema the buildings on my left opposite the council house had nearly all been demolished and were again smoking , the acrid smell was all around me . As I approached the Council House , I could see pink patches in the red sandstone blocks of the front . On closer examination I could see it was where shrapnel from the bombs had pitted the face of the building. ( you can still see them , but they are weathered now ) .

I tried to go down Bayley Lane but thought better of it as I could see smoke and flames in the vicinity of the cathedral . Proceeding along High Street and into Broadgate the scene that met my eyes was one of almost complete devastation . Broadgate was a fairly narrow thorough-fare , before the Blitz you could barely see the Spire of Holy Trinity Church , now you could see it clearly . All that side was a mass of rubble smoking . Looking down towards the almost brand new Owen Owen store it was just a smoking shell . Looking down Smithford Street you could see the situation was similar down there .

As I made my way up Jorden Well to Broadgate , somewhere between Little Park Street and Much Park Street , a shop had been blown away to reveal, close to the pavement , a narrow flight of brown sandstone steps leading down to a rubble filled cellar . The steps were very worn , indicating a clue to the city's ancient past .

I had difficulty picking my way down Broadgate to Cross Cheaping and Bishop Street .
passing the smoking Owen Owen store I proceeded up to the end of Foleshill Road . At the end was the high stone wall of Canal Wharf . About 200 yards away from me a group of soldiers were digging close to the wall . I carried on towards the Radford Road and , as I went around the corner there was a loud bang . Walking back I could see a crater and smoke where the soldiers had been digging . People were running towards it so I carried on walking up to the Radford Road . Walking had become much easier now .

During the course of the journey through the City I had passed several scrawled notices with U.X.B. ( unexploded bomb ) on them and , during the journey had heard on quite a number of times the dull thud of delayed action bombs detonating . I continued on my way up Radford Road , past the Savoy Cinema and came to St . Nicholas Church . This had been completely flattened by a land mine ? ( Land mines were bombs of about 1000 lbs of explosive dropped by parachute . They lay on the surface and , when detonated the blast damage was horrific .) May told me last Sunday that she had clearly seen one dropping in Stoke that night and thought it was a parachutist . I continued on to Kerry Lake's house . He , his mother and family were O.K. I stayed a while and then returned home about 5.00 p.m. the same way . A dismal journey I can well remember .

When I arrived home brother Arthur was there . He had driven up from Southampton .
He had heard on the radio about the air raid on Coventry . (Very unusual in those days ) early in the morning . When he arrived at the city boundary at Toll Bar End , soldiers refused to let him enter the city , so he drove round the city boundary and eventually parked his car and walked to our house . He told us he City was ringed by troops and anti-aircraft guns . - The City was completely blockaded . I think he stayed the night and returned to his wife and family on Saturday , 16th. November . Where he got the petrol for the journey I don't know .

Sometime during Friday , Alf said "I'm going up to Ball Hill to get the extra roll of wallpaper ". We looked at him and he said "I'd better not , they'll think I'm bloody mad ! " He did finish it sometime later when it seemed sensible .

The weekend passed with a blur , still smoke and that acrid smell which , when I was called up into the Navy I identified as the smell of cordite .

We had the news that Mrs. Miller's daughter had been killed by a blast in the Gaumont Cinema . Mrs. Miller was a friend of my mother who lived close by .

On Monday I went to work . When I arrived we were allowed in to clean up and check the machines ready to get them back in production . The factory roof was badly damaged and , while I was cleaning round a line of Brown and Sharpe spline millers , I came across a roughly circular hole between a pair of machines . The foreman sent us home and , when I returned a day or some days later , there was new concrete where the hole had been . They had removed a 50 lb bomb from there . When work was resumed , to keep warm we had 40 gallon oil drums , which had been pierced , full of coke , as fires for heating - the fumes were awful !

Back at work we were told that Eagle street had been wiped out , so I went to have a look . There were virtually no buildings left standing . Looking at it now it has been re-built to it's former 1918/1920 style so you would not notice that they are nearly all post war constructions . After the war hundreds of houses were re-built to their original design . If you walk anywhere in the City now I doubt if you will pass through any pre-war street that has not had at least one house re-built .

In the aftermath , during the following weeks , the Midland Daily Telegraph reported a car on the roof of a house , a pillar box on a roof and we found a 1/4 cwt concrete block on the roof of No. 12 - our house !

The Telegraph also reported ( I think with a photograph ) a land mine hanging by it's parachute from a tree or a building and there were problems de-fusing it .

After about a week , when in town , I noticed double-deck buses from cities all over the country - London , Glasgow , Birmingham , Leicester , Southampton to name a few . These had been sent no doubt due to the trams having been wiped out .

The Telegraph also reported that , after a survey they could not find one house that had not been damaged by enemy action within the City boundary .

May and Alf got married on February 8th. 1941 . The banns were called at St. Margarets Church , Ball Hill , but they married at Stoke St. Michaels on St. Margarets' Register , as St. Margarets had been badly damaged in the raid .

In the months that followed we had many more minor air raids . I worked mainly night shift because they were employing more and more women with whom I would be involved in training .

Many night shifts were spent in the air raid shelters but we got fed up and stayed at our machines unless we or our Warden heard bombs falling , then we went to the shelter .

In the two or three weeks that followed the raid the Government suspended rationing , most of our food and goods had been destroyed . It was rushed into the City and sold in bomb wrecked shops .

It led to bad feeling from the City citizens as, when work started to return to normal , the City boundary was opened and people rushed in from the outlying towns and villages to buy goods which were still rationed where they lived .

We had two very nasty air raids in April 1941 but they did not last as long as November 14th. In one of these our street and area was straffed by machine guns and we were warned to watch out for anti-personnel butterfly bombs which fluttered down on rotating vanes to rest anywhere without exploding . On one of these raids I had been called on to the day shift . I had met a young Irish girl , Ruth McConnell and taken her out a couple of times - she was killed by a direct hit on the shelter where we used to sit together during raids .

Well , I think that I have remembered most of the incidents of that awful period of my life . I expect more will come to mind , but I have run out of steam .

Let me just say this - it was not an experience that should be celebrated as I said earlier on . No words of mine can really convey to you the atmosphere or horror of that night or others which followed . Man's inhumanity to man really is beyond belief ,
war is horrific . Pray God we or you never experience it again .

In the months that followed we at the Veasey had to work 11 3/4 hour shifts for seven days a week and , when my calling up papers arrived for me to join the Royal Navy in May 1942 it was a bit of a relief . Mother said she was glad because of the strain I was under .

But life in the Royal Navy is another story which I might write about later .

AFTERTHOUGHTS
_________________

In the months just prior to The Blitz on November 14th. 1940 bombers made occasional attacks on Coventry . The story going the rounds in Coventry was that , as the City lay in a hollow , the bombers could not find the City , so we were safe .

During the Blitzes mother used to to put Gwen and Edwina on blankets and pillows under the stairs to sleep .

On November 14th. the Rex Cinema in Corporation Street was showing "Gone With The Wind ", the Cinema was destroyed by the bombing . In a Blitz in 1941 the Savoy Cinema at Radford was showing the same film and was destroyed by bombing . Henceforth , any building destroyed was referred to as " Gone With The Wind ".

During the war men and women who did not work were directed into a job . Miss Southern , the spinster living next door , opted to take in transient lodgers to avoid being directed . In one Blitz in April 1941 an Ensa party who she had came into our house for comfort , two girls and a man , all in their nightclothes ; he was wearing a long silk red dressing gown and shaking with fright . He said he had been through London Blitzes but they were not as bad as this and , in the morning , he was off on the train out of Coventry never to return . He had a big golden dragon embroidered down the back of the dressing gown and it seemed to dance as he shook .

After the war I was at British Camp on top of Malvern Hills some 70 miles from Coventry . A local told me that , due to hearing rumbling noises like thunder , he and a lot of others had climbed to the top the hills on November 14th. and they could clearly see the red glow of the fires , flares and flashes of bombs exploding and the flashes of anti-aircraft shells in the sky .

On Christmas Eve 1940 , whilst trying to cook a large goose on a string spit fixed to the mantelpiece in front of a hot open coke fire the power came back on .

During the Blitzes when we went to bed we always had our clothes laid out ready to put on in a hurry , we would hang our trousers on the bottom bed post .

In one April raid Charlie had just returned from an interview at Newark for the R.A.F. - he joined shortly after - anyway , he was away two days and returned very tired . We were all asleep when the sirens went , then the bombs started exploding . Len and I got up and dressed . Suddenly Charlie sat up and shouted " The Droms are Bopping all around " , jumped for his trousers , got his head entangled in his braces , pulled on the bed post , still shouting " The Droms Are Bopping ". Len disentangled him and we ran downstairs killing ourselves laughing . He didn't see the funny side at all !

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.