大象传媒

Coventry Blitz 14th November 1940

On the evening of the Blitz my father departed for his one mile regular bicycle ride to help man the Observer Corps HQ underneath the Post Office in Broadgate the very centre of the city. Later that night when the sirens went my brother and I (aged 9 & 11) retired with our mother to the air raid shelter. This was designed by my father with a reinforced concrete roof and half sunk below the ground; it was fitted with bunks, lights and an electric kettle. From past experience I knew that bombs fell in sticks of 5and the increase or decrease in noise from successive screams as they fell and the final bang when they landed indicated whether they were getting closer or further away. Later that night (the worst we remembered, the nearby anti-aircraft guns fired continuously) mother had just handed me a cup of Horlicks when the sequence of bombs got nearer and nearer, the final big bang blew in the shelter door filling the room with sawdust which had been used for sound deadening. The bomb had landed 10 yards from the air raid shelter door- I still avoid Horlicks.

My brother and I rushed up the steps from the shelter in our pyjamas to see the bomb crater, which was disappointingly small, probably a 25lb bomb. We searched for shrapnel and found large pieces of bomb casing and part of the tail fin still hot. The house was still standing but all the windows were broken and there were tiles missing from the roof. Our father returned in the early hours of the morning when the raid was over, his bicycle crunching up the drive through the broken glass. We were please to see him and he was pleased to see us! We were all grateful to be alive and with a house we could still sleep in although there was no water, gas or electricity. The next morning we all had to leave our house as there was a land mine hanging from a tree by its parachute which could fall and go off at any moment.

Two mornings later my father and I (we were all living with my uncle, these moves were very common at the time between different members of the family) walked into the city centre to check on his office premises in Bailey lane by the Cathedral. The central area was mainly demolished and still smouldering, army engineers were completing the demolition of buildings in dangerous state. The Kings Head hotel in broadgate had leaning chimneystacks, which were being pulled over with ropes and a bulldozer. My father鈥檚 office was a pile of smouldering bricks; only a small coal shovel was retrieved. My own future following my father as a Surveyor and helping to rebuild Coventry was given its first prompting and led to 50 years of rewarding employment.

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