大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from covwarkcsvactiondesk on behalf of Margaret Davoll (Nee Richards) and has been added to the site with her permission. Margaret Davoll fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

Evacuation By Margaret Davoll (Nee) Richards (Coventry)
I was evacuated to Meriden from Frederick Bird鈥檚 school. I lived in Stoke, quite near to the Stoke Library. The day of the evacuation, a photographer from one of the Coventry papers came and took a photo of us outside the school. At the time I wondered why they were bothering to take a photo, when all we wanted to do was get on the buses which would be taking us to Meriden. Imagine my surprise when looking for books in the Herbert Art Gallery, on the history of world war two for my grandson鈥檚 history project, we found a publication of Coventry at War and looking through it found the exact same photograph taken over 60 years ago.
I was one of the lucky children as I had a young sister under school age so our mum was allowed to come with us. We were given a toy as a present. As school friends, we were all split up, as some went to a proper school, others of us went to a hall where desks and furniture were brought in.
We didn鈥檛 stay long in Meriden and came back to Coventry and were here for the Blitz (14th November 1940). We had an air-raid shelter in our back garden, and would go in there every night, instead of going to bed. After the night of the Blitz, an uncle came from Kenilworth and asked to go and stay with them at night. We often had to walk from Coventry to Kenilworth and back, because of the craters in the roads caused by the bombing, preventing buses and cars getting through.
Quite a few of our family members stayed with another uncle and his family in a rather small house in Kenilworth. There were up to six or seven people in one bed, head to toe. At times, I slept in a large baker鈥檚 oven, with three of my cousins, on a mattress which was placed inside. There was no fire, of course, as we could not get coal, and the gas and electricity was cut off, due to the bombing, which destroyed pipes and cables.
We used to eat cold baked beans from a tin and had condensed milk as a pudding, due to there being no gas or electricity. People were rationed and often we queued for bread and fruit as it was very scarce, as it had to come from other countries. I had extra clothing coupons because I was rather tall and had taken a larger shoe than most.
My dad was an air-raid warden and when the sirens sounded, he would go round the streets where we lived, making sure no-one had any lights showing, waking people up who had not heard the sirens. He took a clothes prop from our garden with him to knock on bed room windows to wake them up and make sure they got to the shelter.

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