Young runner helped battle the Blitz damage
Fifteen-year-old Derrick Henry Stokes, was acting as a runner for the Fire Brigade on the night of the Blitz.
Derrick was brought up in Three Spires Avenue by his parents Leonard and Edith, and had two brothers and a sister.
He was a keen boy scout and when acting as a runner he would regularly jump onto the running board of the fire engine and ride to fires or areas of the city that had been hit by bombing.
You can see him talking his Blitz experiences on Youtube:
He tells how, on the night of 14 November he jumped on to the running board as usual, expecting to be home again within an hour or so as usual – but soon after they arrived in the city centre it was obvious that this raid was different.
He ran with messages, but quite quickly the water ran out, even the canal was hit, emptying the water out and there was little that the Fire Brigade could do. Having been told to take shelter he thought that he would just go and have a closer look at Owen Owen burning first – but an air raid warden sent him to a shelter under the Gas Showrooms where he spent the rest of the night with many others listening to the bombs fall and feeling the whole ground shake as they hit.
He particularly remembers a policeman coming down every now and again, covered in dust but calm as anything, reassuring them that they were quite safe and all would be well.
In the morning when he left the shelter he found the city still burning, totally destroyed and it took him quite a time to find his way home because there were no landmarks to follow. He had no idea if his house and family would still be there when he got home but happily although the house had been hit and the roof damaged the family was safe.
After spending the war serving in Italy and Egypt, he married Mavis Eardley in 1950 and lived in Coventry with their four children. He started an engineering company in Coventry, DCM Products and worked there until he retired when he reached his 80th birthday. He now lives in Leek Wootton.