大象传媒

The evening of may 17th 1941 started like many other evenings since the war began two years earlier, preparations for the blackout had been carried out and were in place. All the curtains had been drawn over the windows, and anywhere where it would be possible to see any light from the outside was also blacked out. If any light was seen a passing warden would bang on your door and tell you very rudely to put that light out.
A Nuneaton man was fined seven shillings and seven pence for allowing a light to be shown from his window on October 9th1939.

Dad was relaxing in his armchair by the fire puffing away at his pipe, Les my elder brother, or Leslie to some was sitting on a chair with his back to the window cleaning a double barreled shot gun, which belonged to dad. Dad was born and raised on a farm in Oxfordshire and since moving to Nuneaton and getting married he had obtained permission to help out the farmers on the Arbury estate by using his skills, and also shoot for game, which supplemented our rations. Mother was busy as usual finding something to do, this time she was sitting at the dining table making sandwiches, has she has said before they were incase we got hungry in the night if the air raid was a long one.

Les got up from his chair and put the gun up the corner by the fireplace after being told off by dad for pointing it at people in the room. Dad knew the dangers of guns even empty ones and he was very strict about their use. Les walked to the door to go outside as he did so mother warned him about the blackout. After a while I got a little fed up sitting at the table doing my homework, and I decided to go outside and join Les by making the excuse that I was going to the toilet. Once outside I found Les standing on the garden path, which separated our garden from the neighbours. The night sky was cloudLess with a big moon, as your eyes became accustomed to the light you could see quite well, Les was looking up in the sky towards Coventry, I asked him what he was looking at, he said that there were two planes chasing each other, I spotted them just before the first one burst into flames and headed towards the ground.

We stood for a few more minutes before we heard the noise of a aircraft, over the course of time we had got used to the sounds of the different aircraft, this one was heavy and laboured, and was coming towards us fast and very low, and to us it sounded like a German, the next thing I knew I was sailing through the air with Les's arm round my waist heading for the ground at the back of our garden shed, as we hit the ground we both heard the rattle of machine gun fire. At the time we all thought that the German had machine-gunned the railway station, but we later found out it was the hospital he was after. The emergency hospital as it was called then stood well back off the main road, the wards themselves consisted of eight long brick buildings, four facing the other four with no cover from one to the other. It was called the emergency hospital because it was used to receive servicemen who had been wounded in the war. From the air it probably did not look anything like a hospital, but the tall large impressive building that stood at the side of the main road could have well been taken for an hospital. This building was known as the workhouse or the college for the poor. This stood at one side of the drive leading to the hospital, on the other side was a big tree and a butchers shop with a corrugated steel lean-to garage at the side, the tree and the garage took quite a few bullets, when we saw it later the car inside the garage had a lot of bullet hoLes in it. As Les and I got up from the ground Mothers voice boomed out from by the back door, get in here you two, on the way in home the air raid siren sounded to signify start of an air raid.

In home Mum and Dad had both got their coats on and were ready to go to the shelter. The fireguard was round the coal fire, the hearthrug had been pulled back from the fire, this was a ritual in our house if the house was left empty and there was a fire left burning in the grate. Intuition on mother's part I don't know but tonight she said that we, which meant herself and me were going to shelter up the garden in the Anderson air raid shelter, some nights if the raids were far afield we would shelter under the stairs. Dad and Les would not be joining us they always stayed in the entry which divided our house from the neighbours, they had a bench to sit on, it was made out of an old school desk, it still had the inkwell holes in the side of it.

Mum and I had not been settled long in the shelter before we heard the sound of German aircraft overhead, this is when they dropped incendiary bombs, which were spread over a wide area a lot dropped on and around our block of houses, when dad and Les realised that some had dropped in the street they rushed out of the entry to try and put as many of the fires out as they could, fortunately before the air raids started at the beginning of the war many households were given small sandbags for the purpose of putting this type of fire out, in our block a few of our neighbours had left their sandbags under the window in their front gardens, which was very handy for dad, Les and some neighbours who had gone out to smother the bombs with the sandbags. While they were doing this more German aircraft returned, this time they dropped the big bombs which caused a lot of damage, they whistled as they came down, on hearing the bombs coming down the bomb squad in the street left some of the incendiaries still burning and rushed for cover. Meanwhile Les who was further along the block of houses trying to put an incendiary bomb out that had set fire to someone鈥檚 front door, dad realising that Les had not joined him in the entry shouted to him to take cover, but instead of taking cover nearby Les's instinct was to run and try and get back to his own entry. Has he arrived at the bottom of our entry and was about to turn from the pavement by the front garden the blast from the bomb that had just hit our local church came between the houses over the road and threw Les up in the air and up the entry where he banged his head on the corner of the entry wall which knocked him out, it was fortunate for him that he was wearing a steel helmet at the time, I鈥檓 not sure where the helmet came from but it surely saved Les from a bad injury. The helmet may have been one our elder brother had left behind; he was in the Territorial Army before the war and was among the first to be sent to France. We did not know it at the time but he was a prisoner of war in Poland, he had been reported missing presumed killed. Dad lay on the ground at the top of the entry with his hands over his head when the bomb blast hit he said later that the floor of the entry went up and down like the waves on the sea.

The bomb that hit the church was one of a stick of four, which the German plane dropped. The second one landed right in the middle of the canal near the boot bridge but it did not go off. The third one landed on the main road at the entrance to the emergency hospital, this one left a very big crater. The houses which stood opposite the workhouse near were the bomb dropped were built on a sloping bank, the house nearest the road had high foundations then the house built on the top, this house took most of the blast, the only thing that could be seen after was a bed hanging over a wall. Further up the slope stood three cottages, we learned later that has the bomb went off a old gentleman who was opening his front door at that time was killed. The fourth bomb landed about thirty yards east of the railway line, this one breached the walls of the canal allowing all the water from that section of the canal out to run down the road, but only the water between the wharf and the Boot Inn was lost. Every evening it was the job of two men to dam the water at these two bridges; this was done by pushing railway sleepers into the water in between to slots made in the banks of the canal, and wedging them in place. These slots can still be seen to day.

Now fully recovered Les sat up and immediately saw that there was a fire on the back yard, telling dad as he ran up the entry and into the house where he grabbed two overcoats from inside the backdoor where we always hung our big coats. Outside Les threw the coats onto the burning incendiary bomb dousing the flames while he got by to fetch a couple of sandbags from up by the shed, as he turned with sandbags he looked up to see that the back bedroom was on fire, immediately he shouted to tell dad, on hearing this dad hurried in home. Under the back kitchen sink we always kept two buckets full of coal, dad tipped the coal out of the buckets onto the floor under the sink, once outside he filled them with water from out of the soft water tub, which stood by the wall halfway up the backyard. Carrying a bucket of water each dad and Les hurried indoors and up stairs. The back bedroom was at the far end of the landing, at first
Dad could not get near enough to get the bedroom door open because of the heat, all he could do was to throw water on the door, Les did all the running up and down the stairs to fetch the water he was quicker than dad. Eventually dad got close enough to be able to kick the door open, this enabled him to get the water further into the room. After a while the thick smoke started to give dad-breathing problems. When Les returned with two more buckets of water he found dad gasping for breath at the top of the stairs, leaving the fire Les helped dad down the stairs and into the entry to get some fresh air dad suffered bad from asthma Les fetched him one of his tablets and a glass of water. Les made dad promise to sit where he was till he felt better, but dad said you can't do it on your own you have got to get help. You sit where you are I know where I can get help, Les said, up the garden path he ran banged on the air raid shelter door shouting for me to join him, I need your help he said, as I climbed out of the shelter mum came to the door and looked down the garden path, when she saw the fire I heard her say. My house is on fire. We didn't know it till later but on seeing the fire mum passed out.

Now it was up to me to help Les put the fire out, by now our water butt was empty so we had to start using our neighbours water, they had a water barrel in their backyard which was identical to ours. Both barrels were made of wood with steel rims round them; dad estimated that each barrel would hold about fifty gallons of water.

After running up and down the stairs many times dad joined me and said that he felt much better, between us we got the water up to Les more quickly. We had used up nearly all the water out of the neighbours butt when Les came down the stairs to tell us that the fire was out. Relieved with the thought that there would be no more running up and down the stairs with buckets of water we all three of us went and sat quietly on the bench in the entry, that is until dad suddenly jumped up and said your mother, and left us and went up the garden to the air raid shelter.

Dawn was starting to break through now, and then we heard the sound everybody liked to hear, the continuous wailing sound of the siren signaling the all clear. Les and I decided to walk up the backyard to see what damage had been done to the bedroom from the outside, pieces of burnt window frame lay on the backyard, just then mum came down the garden path followed by dad, as she got nearer to us she said come here you two, then she put her arms round our shoulders hugged us and said. My boys I鈥檓 proud of you. Right she said as she left us to go into the house lets see what mess you've made me. Mum was a big lady with blonde hair, i noticed as she walked down the yard that her hair had turned white, i motioned to Les this fact but he told me to shut up.

Inside home the water was still running down the back wall and the wall over the sink, towards the pantry door a part of the ceiling had come down, you were up to your hocks in water in both the back kitchen and the pantry as dad would say. In the pantry most of the ceiling had been fetched down with the weight of water everything was wet through. After looking at the damage mum turned to dad and said Jack is the kettle boiling we'll have a cup of tea. I think that mum had got over most of the shock now and after talking to dad in the shelter.

Sitting having a nice cup of tea we heard foot steps in the entry, I followed Les out of the door to see who it was an air raid warden was coming up the entry carrying a stirrup pump, he asked if he could see dad but Les advised him that now would not be a very good time. Les took the air raid warden up the yard to the see the back bedroom, the air raid warden said that he would come back another time, after he left Les discreetly hid the stirrup pump in the shed, then we went back in home to finish our cup of tea.

Jack our elder brother who was a prisoner of war in Poland was repatriated back home to England before the end of the war because he had rheumatic fever which kept recurring, and the Germans who held him prisoner decided he was unfit to fight anymore. My other brother Les who I helped with the fire went into the forces when he was eighteen and was killed in Burma on June the 14th 1944, when he was only nineteen, while fighting the Japanese.

A time to remember shall we ever forget

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