大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Caroline Chambers of Sutton Coldfield Library on behalf of John Wilson and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was nine when war broke out and fifteen when it concluded, living in Wylde Green, Warwickshire at the time. We were subjected to regular bombing raids including two land mines and several bombs in the area. At one point a gun was being brought down on the adjoining railway line!

My late father worked as a commercial representative for 'Pinchin & Johnson', which necessiatated him being 'away from home' on alternate weeks. With all the happenings, he did not like the idea of leaving us at home on our own. A colleague of his, Bill Wainwright, lived at 'Chesswood Grange', in rural Lapworth, Warwickshire. His wife worked in partnership with a Maisie Gough, running a private dietetic home on site. Bill suggested to my father that we join them as 'guests' and live with them in this isolated country location. What we all did not appreciate at the time was how close it was, as the crow flies, to nearby Coventry, which suddenly started to receive regular bombing raids night after night!

The raids seemed to get earlier and earlier and at one point we were all out in the grounds of the home watching the carnage. The sky was like daylight and filled with planes, going in both directions. We really sympathized with the poor Coventrians and quite appreciated why a new verb, 'to Coventrate', was born!

When it got really heavy we all retreated to the rambling damp cellars where bunk beds had been installed. The one night it felt like rain was falling on my face in bed, but when I switched on my torch I found I was covered with a few score of tiny frogs, no bigger than a thumbnail.

The next morning I gathered up some of the frogs in a large matchbox to show to the fellow residents. I put the box down on the table and forgot about it. When someone wanted a match they opened the box, to release a wave of frogs all over the table, disappearing in all directions, accompanied by screams from the startled diners!

A decided hazard from my point of view was that the various dieticians were always trying to get my mother to put me on one of their wretched diets! When we arrived at the home I was suffering badly from catarrh, brought on by many earlier nights of being down damp air raid shelters. I was told I must go on a milk diet for a month, with no solids. I wasn't particularly fond of milk and never reached the total of eight pints a day! It was rather a long walk to the village school there and back and by evening I was absolutely ravenous, with my stomach rumbling like distant thunder. After ten days I cracked and sneaking down to 'Pottertons', the local village shop with my accumulated pocket money I just had enough to buy a large tin of tomato soup and a bag of dried prunes. Getting back to the home I warmed the soup on the Aga cooker and then wolfed down the dried prunes. Not having eaten for ten days, I was promptly violently sick! At least it had drawn attention to my plight and I was immediately put back on to normal food!

Bill Wainwright, himself went on a months water diet, 'to clean out his system'. I use to watch him in the early mornings, stripped to the waist, struggling to drag a huge garden roller over the extensive lawns with his ribs bulging out, almost to breaking point. Needless to say he didn't get very far and soon relinquished his particular diet too!

Whilst the Battle of Britain was on in 1940, we use to witness many lightning raids, to drop incendiaries on Coventry. They used to be chased off by our Hawker Hurricanes. One afternoon I was at the top of a large Poplar tree, when I was suddenly surrounded by a real 'dog fight'. The shrapnel and spent shell and bullet cases came raining down all around me. At one point a large piece of shrapnel, white hot, landed just to the right of my head and I spent some time with a hanky and a pen knife ferreting it out together with some smaller pieces of shrapnel, and put them in a tobacco tin, which I was carrying with me. The raid was still on when I walked through the glass solarium into the main lounge, to find it apparently empty of people. Three or four large settees had been grouped round in a circle and the residents were hiding behind them. When I gave the tin to my mother she burnt herself on the large piece of shrapnel, which was still very hot, and nearly fainted! " Do you realise?" she said "another couple of inches and you would not have been telling us this tale!".

As the raids got more numerous I was being put to bed earlier each night and was not allowed to listen to my favourite 'I.T.M.A.' (It's That Man Again), with the Liverpool comedian Tommy Handley, who did so much to cheer our spirits during these times. To keep me company however, they used to leave me with a small black Corgi dog called 'Cogie', who would get quite frightened when the bombing got under way, and get brought downstairs again.

One night my father returned to the Grange proudly bearing a pair of 'Wolseley' socks, which he had got under the counter from his regular clothes shop in Birmingham. Since he suffered badly with cold feet at night he promptly put them on when he went to bed. We were woken about 2.30am with massive gun fire and the sky lit with flashes. Cogie, who was terrified, promptly evacuated his bowels on my fathers side of their bed. He lept out and slid straight up to the window with an anguished howl of "my lovely new socks!". He never wore them again!

We must have stayed at the Grange a couple of years and at one point a Cockney lad, by the unusual name of 'Athol' was billeted at the lodge keepers cottage. I felt really sorry for him because they had no real lighting or heating. It was cold water and a toilet down the bottom of the garden, lighting being by oil lamps. We struck up quite a close friendship, until one day, after returning from a short holiday, we found Athol was no longer there. His mother had come to visit him from London and he was so home sick he prevailed on her to take him back home. Sixty five years on I often wonder what happened to him, particularly as 'Athol' was such an unusual name. We had a motley selection of other evacuees, as time went by, as well as patients. One such patient was a young army officer who had been in command of a tank, but had suffered a nervous breakdown. He always use to sit smartly dressed in grey suit, white shirt and tie, with a trilby hat covering his eyes, watching everybody from under the brim while he sat at the end of the garden on a deckchair, not missing much of what was going on.

The one afternoon Athol and I had rigged up a rope over two posts to enable us to do some hurdling. One of the nurses, an ash blonde, with a beautiful Devon burr, asked if she could join in as she had four brothers and had been a bit of a tomboy. "How can you?" I asked, "wearing that starched apron, over that ankle length striped skirt?". "Don't worry," she said, scooping up her skirt and apron and stuffing them down the front of her voluminous black bloomers! Combined with her black stockings and suspenders this must have provided quite a sight for the onlookers. We suddenly heard a loud crash and turned round to observe the tank officer had fallen off his deckchair and was lying on the lawn with his hat spinning round him!

One lasting memory of this particular location was Saturday nights, when it was arranged for a concert to be put on by the occupants, which could be quite wearing! One old dear, who had a particularly strong contralto voice, always used to sing 'God Bless this House', usually followed by 'One Fine Day' (from the opera Madame Butterfly). My father would be called up for a wobbly barritone version, of the First World War opus, 'TRUMPETER' (What Are You Sounding Now?) I can never hear these songs now without feeling quite unnerved. It nearly put me off music for life!

On the credit side we did have a Church of England minister who turned out to be a really good conjurer, which helped make up for the various dramatic recitations and regular showings of copious holiday slides.

At least I survived the war and the rigours of 'Chesswood Grange'! But I always wonder what happened to Athol.

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