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One of the most frightening thing I remember that sent shivers down my spine — a parachute coming down with a basket of flares attached to it, it looked alien, as though it had come from another world — and I still remember the sensation of my feelings.

As a small boy I was living in Warley Smethwick near Birmingham:- The night Coventry was bombed the whole sky was lit with an orange glow.

Opposite the house where we lived was a stream that had paths and bridges running across the stream, which from the air looked like a railway line, (my father had done the architectural drawings for the bridges and they are still there to this day). A bomb was dropped on the path. Four people were waiting at the bus stop, plus an air raid warden who had stopped for a chat, they were all killed instantly. The next day all that could be seen was a large hole with smoke coming from it, a white handbag and a shoe, nothing more. So many windows shattered by the blast.
A survivor who had heard the bomb coming had laid flat on the ground and when he got up, he wanted his cigarettes in his pocket, they were full of dirt from the blast.

Pot Luck!
Two brothers walking up the road heard a bomb. One went one side of the street, the second the other, both to shelter in an entry. A direct hit from the bomb, one brother killed the other survived.

We didn’t go to school - we went to a local house for either morning or afternoon lessons. My little friend of 5 whose parents had a shop, the shop was bombed and the little girl never returned. We has an Anderson shelter in the garden, and could spend up to 14 hours there at a time, it was very small, damp and cold, some bedding and wooden planks, and other families joined us, ten to twelve people could be there together, there were a few basic provisions, but these could often be stale by the time we had to return again, especially the cake!

One night in the shelter we heard machine gun fire from a Spitfire; we rushed outside to see a plane on fire, skimming over the top of our house. The German bomber just missed the Two Brewers Pub, but demolished four houses behind it.
Two airmen who survived were captured and taken to the police station for their own safety as the local women had rolling pins and toasting forks!! All that remained of the plane was the tail with the German Swastika.

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