大象传媒

On the night of the worst air raid that Coventry ever suffered, my father called to my mother, sister and myself to come to the lounge window and look at the city burning. It was quite incredible. From our house, three miles from the city centre, we saw an unbroken arc of fire; every building was blazing, with no spaces in between that were not alight
Suddenly my father said 鈥漌e should know better than to stand if front of a glass window on a night like this, get back to cover.鈥� That sent us back towards the relative safety of our bed under the stairs. My mother and sister made it, I didn鈥檛 quite, and my father was behind me. I heard myself shout 鈥淒addy!鈥� and I heard his voice answering that he was all right before I lost consciousness momentarily in the noise and dust. My father was actually saved when half the heavy oak front door trapped him against a remaining wall. The other half disappeared skyward I don鈥檛 know where.
Then a lovely thing happened. I woke slowly to a sniffing and shuffling right on top of me. Something licked my face, and what slowly rose to its feet appeared to be a large black dog. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it certainly looked like a dog. A second later it was gone. I never saw it again, and I have no idea where it came from, but it certainly saved me a severe battering from debris. It left me totally uninjured, with a warm feeling where it had lain on top of me, and with a lasting affection for very large dogs.

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