大象传媒

I well remember the first night that the sirens sounded in Coventry. There can be very few sounds more terrifying than that of the sirens waking you up from a deep sleep in the middle of the night. I scrambled out of bed like a mad thing, finding it impossible to get dressed as I tried to put my trousers on back to front. My father fared no better as he somehow contrived to get both legs down one leg of his long-johns. Laughable now, but not so funny at the time.
We scampered down to the shelter in the garden and there we sat for several hours, until the all-clear sounded. Nothing had happened. This was to be repeated night after night, as regular as clockwork.
Gradually we became more confident, and waited until we could hear the sound of enemy aircraft before going to the shelter. Their engines had quite a distinctive noise, with a rise and fall in pitch which I believe was due to their engines not being synchronised.
On Thursday, November 14th, a date I remember as well as my own birthday, the night was brilliantly clear, with a full moon looking as large as a dinner plate. Shortly after 7 o'clock, the familiar drone of enemy aircraft was heard, and we made our way outside to the shelter. Suddenly, a flare lit up the sky overhead, and then there was another, and another, and another, until the centre of Coventry was ringed with a circle of lights, and as we watched in surprise, there followed the screaming of over a thousand incendiary bombs as they rained down through that circle from the skies above. No longer were the flares needed to guide the stream of aircraft, for the hundreds of fires on the ground were now the target for the high explosive bombs that followed.
The raid, for which the German code name was apparently 'Moonlight Sonata', as we found out much later, lasted for over ten hours until 5 o'clock the next morning. Occasionally, we could see an aircraft caught in the beams of our searchlights, and it seemed impossible that the anti-aircraft guns could miss such a clear target.
In all, 60,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, including the Cathedral, 3 factories, 600 shops, 28 hotels, the railway station and central railway lines. Although the city was defended by over 40 anti-aircraft guns and a number of night fighters, not one German aeroplane was shot down. The town centre was completely destroyed, as also were large areas in the suburbs, a lot of the damage being caused by fires. The Fire Services were completely over-run, and in addition, the water mains were so badly damaged that many water supplies dried up entirely.
As far as we ourselves were concerned, we escaped scot-free, except that the ceiling in my bedroom came down, and a number of roof slates were damaged, due to falling shrapnel from our own ack-ack guns.
At one time during the night, there was a lull in the bombing, and I went outside and wandered around. One or two others were doing likewise, and one man - seeing my tin hat and thinking that I was some sort of official - said "You'd better come over here mate, I think there's an unexploded bomb." Rather foolishly, I suppose, I followed him to a house that was half demolished and, from somewhere inside the ruin, there came a rather loud humming noise.
On reflection, I don't suppose it mattered whether there was another bomb there, but nevertheless we went to investigate. It turned out that a wireless set that had obviously been playing when the raid started was still switched on, and it was the radio that was responsible for the hum. The occupants of the house were no longer there and had presumably taken shelter elsewhere. No medals this time!
Two days later, I walked into town to see the havoc that had been created, and there on the other side of the road, also picking his way through the rubble, was King George VI, accompanied by Herbert Morrison, Minister of Home Security.

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