Tell us your stories
Do you remember the Blitz? Do you have a story to tell about the night of 14 November 1940 and what happened to you and your family? Or do you have a story about your parents and grandparents and what they went through that night?
If so, send us your story so we can share it with others and help to mark the 75th anniversary by telling the stories of Coventry people.
E-mail communications@coventry.gov.uk [mailto:communications@coventry.gov.uk] or call 024 7683 2982.
Newlyweds lost their home â but then gained a bathroom
For Coventry couple Ron and Beryl Hodgkins, the Blitz came just seven months after their marriage – and left them homeless.
They were living at 67 Kirby Road, Earlsdon. Ron, aged 25, was working at the BTH (British Thompson-Houston) as an electrical engineer and 24-year-old Beryl, at the Standard Motor Company as a clerk.
Their son Paul, who now lives in Nottingham, said his late parents were lucky to be able to take shelter in their neighbours’ Anderson Shelter though they had to leave their young Cocker Spaniel, Rusty, in the house as he wasn't allowed in the shelter.
Paul said: “When they emerged from the shelter after the first raid they found that one nearby bomb had blown out all the windows of their house and Rusty had been so frightened by his experience that he had leapt through a now glassless frame and was in the back garden soaking wet with fear induced sweat.
“Apparently, my mum commented that, given the damage to the house, she couldn't possibly go to work the next day but would have to stay at home and clear up as best she could.
“As the raid continued, mum and dad returned to the shelter but Rusty again had to stay outside although he stayed as close to the shelter as he could. They emerged hours later when it was apparent that the raids had finally ended to discover that both their house and the attached house next door, number 69 , had now been totally destroyed!
“There was now no point in mum staying at home to clear up as there was no house left so both my mother and father simply went into work leaving the recovery of anything that was left for later.
“After the raid as they no longer had a home of their own, or at least not one that they could live in, they initially stayed with my mum's mum who lived opposite their own destroyed house, later they were able to rent a house in a street nearby, number 9 Farman Road. The owner had moved out to the country for the duration of the war.
“Apparently the main concern of my parents and others in the hours/days immediately after the raid was not so much about themselves but about the destruction of the Cathedral. They couldn't understand how the Germans could bomb it. My mother could also remember being warned that in the city centre there were still bodies underneath the rubble of the destroyed Department Store, Owen and Owen .
“Later on that year my father volunteered for the RAF and spent 12 months mainly in Alabama, USA, training to be as a pilot. Unfortunately he failed to qualify and was destined to be a rear gunner in a bomber, the fate apparently of all failed pilots - and with a life expectancy of four missions. Most fortunately for myself and my sister, the powers that be decided he was more useful supporting the war effort as a skilled engineer (a now reserved occupation) back in Coventry, this time at the Standard Motor Company as a tool maker, helping to manufacture amongst other things the famous Mosquito Fighter Bomber.
“My mother spent the rest of the war both working at the Standard and helping her mother run her small shop.
“Once the war ended 67 and 69 Kirby Road were rebuilt and mum and dad moved back in. However, the two new houses now had bathrooms which the other houses in the street didn't have so the German bombers did do them at least one good turn! This was the house in which I was born in 1951 though my older sister Christine was born in the rented house on Farman Road. Rusty the Cocker Spaniel ... he survived the war and I still remember him from my childhood, albeit not in an affectionate way, as by that time he was quite an old dog, couldn't see very well, and therefore had a habit of knocking over all my toys!
“They were a tough lot the Second World War generation. When during my own life I have heard people of my own generation or the next saying they can't get into work because there is an inch of snow on the roads, or because the buses aren't running, or that they dare not travel to London because there had been a terrorist bomb the day before, and there might, therefore, be another one today, I can't help but wonder what my parents and their whole generation would think?”
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.
Phyllis Corney, aged 86
I lived in Montalt Road, Cheylesmore. It was another night in the air raid shelter in our garden after tea, as usual.
Father went out laying incendiary bombs and sand and his hand got hurt, leaving him disabled and unable to work after that. The next morning I walked with my mum, dad, sisters, Peg and Eileen and brother Ron, to Cubbington, where after knocking doors, we were taken in and stayed with a lady called Mrs Merriman. Our house had been damaged and we had to have doors and windows replaced.
My brother and dad then had to cycle to work from Cubbington to Baginton at an ammunition factory. We had to go to school but I didn’t like it.
Brenda Savage
Brenda Savage, Arizona, USA – telling the story of her mum Bridgett Tunkle, who lived on Craigends Road, Binley
My mother is originally from Lochore, Fife, Scotland - her and her family moved to Binley for her dad’s job - he was a coal miner.
What my mom and many relatives have told me is that when the bombing campaign started she was in the city centre with a few friends - and they knew they were in trouble for being where they were not supposed to be - but, my mom said as long as they got home alive they could handle anything.
Upon arriving home, she said her dad took her and her friends to his home-made shelter in the yard. Whenever she talks about this she has to laugh as it was a large hole with metal over it! But her dad thought he had done what was best for his large family - 10 children.
One person wouldn't leave her house or her bed during the Blitz and Auntie Annie would bring her whisky and she would tell Hitler to go ahead.
Needless to say they all lived, and my mom came to America - and to lovely Prescott, Arizona. But one thing every one of my relatives says is that even though that time was horrific it made them the people they are.
Victoria Seaton
My grandma was 20 years old in 1940 and newly married to my grandad who was overseas in the Navy.
She lived in Birmingham and her house backed onto the Grand Union Canal, the railway and large industrial areas which were used to manufacture armaments during the war (she worked at the Crown Bedding which produced tank parts). On the night of 14 November, the air raid sirens sounded in her neighbourhood but her family didn’t go down into their Anderson Shelter because it was filled knee-deep with water.
My grandma remembers climbing onto the house roof and watching the bombs dropping over Coventry city centre, seeing the flames destroying many of the buildings and watching the Cathedral engulfed. She recalls being terrified that their city would be next.
Just five days later the Luftwaffe began their night time assault on Birmingham. My grandma and her family were incredibly lucky that their house remained undamaged by the Blitz, however, an incendiary bomb did land in their garden. She rushed out with her brother to start covering the missile with dirt and sand but it detonated before it had been completely buried. My grandma still bears the scars from where the blistering hot metal landed on her and burnt through her clothes to her skin. At 95 years old she has lost many of her memories so I’m just pleased that she managed to tell me her story before it was lost forever.
Carl Booth
I was not born until 1944, however, I consider myself a victim of war.
The story I have grown up with is my parents Harry and Nellie Booth were both born inside Coventry city walls in 1898 and 1900 so had already endured the horrors and grief of the First World War.
On the night of the raid they gave their shelter to a family with a newborn. Harry was talking to a neighbour over a fence - after all the activity was miles away. When out of the blue an enemy bomber appeared. Harry shouted and hit the deck at the same time Nellie had just come out of the house. As the bomb exploded, Nellie charged into the outside toilet.
Their neighbour was killed instantly. Harry was unhurt, but the explosive went through the toilet door and hit Nellie. She was taken to hospital, then onto Kineton village to die in the make-shift hospice there, but she was made of sterner stuff she survived gangrene and lived the rest of her life with one leg three inches shorter and several holes all over her body. The neighbour’s son Alan, who is still alive today, has shrapnel in his stomach.
I remember having one mum who spent lots of time as a patient in Stoney Stanton Road hospital and a much younger mum – my sister. Like most adolescent youth I recall thinking I loved my dad, but what has he seen of life. Later on in my early 60s I then realised he was more of a man than I will ever be. He was in the occupation forces of the First World War, worked in the brutal regime of the ‘20s and ‘30s; he lost all his possessions to looters; he had a wife not expected to live; and he had no home and three children. He is my hero, shame it took me 60 years to realise.
I salute all the unsung heroes.
Claire Franklin
My nan and granddad, Violet and Arthur Franklin, were courting during the Blitz. They were walking home from the cinema in town when the air raid sirens sounded and they dived for cover in a nearby air raid shelter, only there was someone already in the air shelter. As they were a courting couple they left that shelter and walked to the next one so they could be on their own and a bomb hit the first shelter.
So my nan always used to tell us that if they had stayed in the first air raid shelter then they wouldn't have survived, got married, had children and grandchildren.
My Nan also told us the story of a family who decided to go to the pub. The pub was bombed and the whole family tragically died but their house was bombed too, so whether they had stayed in or gone out that night they would have been killed either way. It may have been somewhere in Stoke as that is where my grandad lived at the time.
John Green â son of Police Constable (PC 49) Jack Green
Playing in Mile lane as a 10-year-old with my mates I noticed this old man making his way from the city centre. Just young boys having fun when this “old man” said to me ‘Hello son’. It was my father, covered in dust and dirt which disguised his police uniform.
That man of 40 years of age had become an “old man” overnight due to the stressful sights he had seen. Like all those people who witnessed those dreadful times he never spoke about them.
Denise Flude
My grandfather, Roger William Thompsell, was in the Home Guard and was on duty the night of the Blitz.
On that night the air raid siren sounded and my grandmother, my mum, aged 4, and her siblings who lived right in the city centre in Queen Victoria Road, went with hundreds of others to the air raid shelter for the duration of the raid.
When they returned they found their house destroyed and my grandad had been injured by a stray piece of shrapnel which had hit him in the throat. My Gran was told he had been taken to Gulson Road Hospital but by the time she arrived there he had died. She was left with four children, no home and no husband.
Roger Kerby
Although only a toddler at the time and living in Kenilworth, I clearly remember seeing and hearing the German bombers turning around the castle and making their run into the city using the moonlit straight mile of Kenilworth Road as their guide.
The heavy drone of the engines struck terror into my heart even at that early age.
Later I was taken into the garden to stare at what appeared to be the sky on fire, I could feel the heat and could hear a pattering noise on the roof of the house which turned out be shrapnel from the bursting bombs five miles away.
Next day my grandfather attempted to go into Coventry to find my aunt who lived in Canley but was unable to go along the Kenilworth Road due to the number of people fleeing the city. She later turned up safe and sound, having hidden in fields around Westwood Heath.
Barbara Bradwell, nee Goodenough, now living in South Australia
I was only six the night of the Coventry Blitz and when I think back over my life it’s probably the first memory I recall.
My mother had one of her sisters who lived in Coventry and both houses were rather overcrowded as the rest of their family had been on the last ship to leave Guernsey in the Channel Islands before the Germans landed there. We lived in Middlecotes and whenever the sirens went my parents never got us children out of bed till the guns at the army camp at Tile Hill started firing, which they did quite early on that night.
Anyway, there we were, all down in the Anderson Shelter at the bottom of the garden. I’m not sure how many were there – maybe five of us, my dad wasn’t there as he was in the ARP and had gone to do his duty there. There was my Uncle Boy, one of mum’s brothers, and his wife with their baby Geoff, and some more from Guernsey but I can’t remember who.
The reason I remember my uncle is because at one stage he was outside the shelter and he looked in the doorway and said “shut your eyes and bung your ears as there’s a b....y great lot of bombs coming down”. I don’t remember hearing anyone swear before and Auntie Phill said “Boy!” It was a long time after that before we went back to the house and I don’t think we ever used the shelter again.
Denise Buchanan
My grandparents owned the Salutation Inn, which was situated near the roundabout at the bottom of London Road. The cellar was regularly used during bombing and particularly on the night of the Blitz.
It got so bad they sold the pub and moved to Northampton. My grandmother also owned the paper shop next door. My maternal grandmother lived in Paradise Street to the back and above of the sweetshop there - they were heavily targeted due to the close proximity of the Armstrong Siddley works where my father did his apprenticeship - the kinship of these days is well remembered, but the bombing was a dread to all.
Harry Carter, from his granddaughter, Susan Carter
My late grandfather, Harry Carter, worked at Harvey's Warehouse, wholesale grocers, at Priestly Bridge on the Stoney Stanton Road.
He was a member of the Homeguard and did fire watch duty at the warehouse during air raids. When the war started, he would take my dad, John, on a Sunday to make tea whilst the men painted the sky lights black.
Dad said they rarely saw him. Either he was at work or on fire watch duty. He would come home, get washed, shaved and changed and then go back into Coventry.
Grampy never spoke of what happened, what he witnessed, especially on 14 November onwards. Only in his sleep, through his nightmares, talking in his sleep, my grandmother, Annie, found out some of what happened. And when he was ill with cancer he would relive again those events.
Once, when we went to visit him in hospital, he thought my younger brother was my dad, and asked if the family was OK, as the bombing had been bad that night.
We know he was just coming off duty when the bombing started and he stayed on. At one point he found an abandoned fire engine, which he got going and drove over to the canals, which were pumped dry, trying to fight the fires.
We also know that when the engines ran out of petrol he set off with an empty petrol can, heading for the old fire station to see if they had any petrol. On the way there he walked through a tunnel of fire which was formed from the flames meeting overhead from the buildings on either side of him. Somewhere near The Hippodrome Theatre he had to lie down in the gutter and let the bloody water wash over him to prevent being burnt alive.
Harvey's was hit and dad thinks it was probably around the Blitz - 13 people were trapped under the stairs and had to be rescued. Then when they were out, they pitched in and helped rescue other people and fight fires.
He eventually managed to drive home, using a works van. No one knows how he drove home as he was completely exhausted. The first anyone knew he'd survived was when my grandmother heard a bump at the door, when she opened it Grampy fell in, asleep on his feet. She managed to pull him in. He was black head to foot, covered in clay, blown from the foundations of the city. His hair, eyelashes and eyebrows were all singed off and his eyes were bloodshot for days.
In December 1940, my grandfather received a letter of thanks from the head ARP warden. Then in April 1941 he received a letter and bill for his Home Guard uniform, which he'd worn during the air raid, "as it was returned in a worn condition." Sum of £1.17S.9d.
He received another letter saying as he hadn't paid the money the police would be informed. He also received a letter of support from Leslie Bonham, of Bonhams Chemist, then on Stoney Stanton Road and Head warden, "regarding the valuable assistance he gave during the air raids on Coventry, including the 14th Nov and the following days."
He never paid the bill.
Cathedral Crypt and a pub cellar kept pair safe in the Blitz
For young Joyce Matthews’ mum, the Cathedral crypt seemed the perfect shelter to keep her daughter safe on the night of 14 November 1940.
But just a few hours later, 12-year-old Joyce and her friends and near neighbours in the crypt were being led to safety as the Cathedral burned in the Blitz.
Joyce – now Joyce Sutton – had family and friends in St John’s Street near the Cathedral and so they sheltered every night in the crypt – having tea at home and then heading off to the mattresses beneath the Cathedral floor.
Her mum Gertrude and sister were in Hillfields and her dad Alfred was elsewhere in the city, but Joyce was spending the night like any other.
She said: “We each had a mattress in the crypt and we used to go there every evening, we didn’t wait for the sirens to go. We went there because it was safe, it was a big space and there were a lot of people down there.
“You never had a good night’s sleep, there was always noise and the shelters were pretty horrible places, they were quite smelly.
“Then that night I remember the wardens and the people who used to watch for fires came down and said we had to get out because the Cathedral was badly on fire.
“We got out and I looked back and I thought the spire was on fire it was so bright, reflecting the flames, and I panicked and started to run. I was frightened, we all were. There were no lights, but the fires meant it was quite bright.”
Joyce went to the old furniture store basement – now the Spar shop in Hay Lane next to the Council House – and spent the night in their cellar until the all clear. And then she came out to a city that had completely changed.
She said: “We had to walk home to Hillfields and we came up into Broadgate – we weren’t allowed to go near the Cathedral. Most of Broadgate had gone – there was only the bank with the pillars left.
Joyce Sutton
“I remember the heat. We hadn’t heard much at night because we were underground, but there was heat and dust and noise that day.
“I was young and didn’t really know what was going on, but everyone just got on with it. We had to. I don’t know how we did it.”
Joyce’s sister-in-law Dorothy Sutton, nee Wright, of Wyken, also remembers the night of the Blitz, when she sheltered in the beer cellar of the Hare and Hounds pub in Gulson Road as an 11-year-old.
She said: “We had been bombed out two weeks before the Blitz. We had a house in Charterhouse Road and when the sirens sounded one night we went to the shelter. When the all-clear sounded we went to go back home and a warden asked where we were going and what number we lived at and then he said ‘your house has gone’.
“My house was flattened. We lost everything. We just had what we were wearing. My mum had told me off for wearing my new coat, saying it would get dirty in the shelter, but I remember thinking ‘at least I have my new coat’.
“We went to stay with friends in the day and sheltered in the pub at night. We had mattresses near where the beer barrels were stored. It had mattresses and there were about six families down there and we went top to toe. We took our own bedding but never got undressed we went home for a good wash in the morning.
“The day of the Blitz we had walked to see my dad Alfred, who was being treated for consumption at Hertford Hill near Warwick. He died a fortnight later. I never know how my mum coped – we lost our house and everything in it and my dad.”
Dorothy’s mum May managed to get a house in Northfield Street and find bits of furniture, but Dorothy was to have another lucky escape during the air raids.
A few months later the pub she had sheltered in had a direct hit and the landlord was killed. She said: “I must have been lucky – first my house and then the pub, but I was all right. I didn’t think about dying really, I was too young.”
Looking back on the night of the Blitz, she said: “At the time we didn’t realise how bad it was, it was hard to know from the shelters. It was like any other night, but it started early about 7pm and we thought ‘when is it ever going to end?’
“Then I remember walking into town the next day and everything was just smouldering. I remember heat and noise.
“You can’t imagine it now and I don’t know how people coped, but everyone seemed to muck in and never complain. We never went hungry.”
The day after the Blitz, Joyce and her family set off to walk to Kenilworth after being told it was not safe in the city. They were picked up by a truck and spent the night in the ballroom at the Abbey Hotel, but came back to the city again the next day.
She went to Wheatley Street School, near where Sidney Stringer is now, and she remembers having to do lessons with her gas-mask on to get used to it – and how badly it smelled!
Both women lived through many air raids and Dorothy remembers the spring raids of 1941 and how the city burned that night, and how her sister woke her to take her to safety in a shelter because she had thought it was safe to stay in her own bed for once.
And both women remember how much the city changed that night.
Dorothy said: “It was a lovely old world city, with trams. I was only young, but I remember the town.”
And similar to their fathers’ experiences in the First World War, the two rarely speak of the Blitz or the other bombing raids they lived through, but said they wanted to share their story for the anniversary to let others know.
Betty Whyman, nee Standell
It was a beautiful moonlit night, almost as bright as day. In the house was my mother and father Lilian and Harold, my two brothers Denis and Ken Standell, myself and my father’s mother Eliza.
We had just finished our evening meal when the sirens went and as usual we gathered our things together. My mother picked up a little brown case which I think had important documents in it, which incidentally I still have, and we all went to the Anderson shelter which my father had dug out and constructed in our back garden. My grandmother Eliza did not want to go as she found it difficult to get in and out of it, but my father insisted. We had a little Tilly lamp which gave enough light to see each other by and two upturned plant pots with a candle inside which warmed the pot and it gave out a little bit of warmth.
It was not long before the drone of the bombers’ engines was heard overhead and the bombs started to fall. The guns stationed in the Memorial Park were firing and I presume that it was the shrapnel from the shells that we were hearing falling on the roofs like hail.
My father was on fire-watching duty but kept coming back to see if we were all alright. We had a stirrup pump in the garden just in case.
Halfway through the night, amid all the noise, there was a tremendous explosion, we found out afterwards that it was a land mine which of course we did not hear coming, it dropped in the back garden of the houses opposite our house. I think it was number 57 which is where my friend lived but they were not at home and as far as I know were in a public shelter somewhere.
My father came and opened the door of the shelter and said "We are homeless". Then my mother said "Oh, my new carpet". Previously she had only had lino and a few rugs. I said "My new coat." What silly things to say. Another 100 yards in our direction and I would not be writing this now.
When things quietened down we went to look at what had been our home, as we walked down the garden path I saw a colander hanging on the tree outside the pantry window, inside doors hung off their hinges, windows blown in and looking up you could see the sky. On the chair under the window I had left my knitting and miraculously not a stitch was broken even under all of the glass.
We started walking to my mother's parents’ house at 96 Newcombe Road, leaving my grandmother Eliza at her friend’s house in Moor Street. Walking down Earlsdon Street there did not seem to be any damage at all. As far as I remember on the way we heard the all clear sound a long way in the distance. Possibly at Binley Pit as more than likely the ones nearby had been hit by bombs.
When we arrived at my grandparents’ house we knocked on the door and asked if they had room for a homeless family and there we all stayed for a few weeks until we were fortunate enough to get a house a few weeks before Christmas. It was one that my aunt owned and rented out in Pearson Avenue, the previous tenants had moved out of Coventry to escape the bombing. At first we were not allowed to go into our bomb damaged house to salvage any furniture as it was too dangerous, at some point some things were got out. The headboard of the bed still had shrapnel in it.
I worked at Standard Motor Company at Canley and went back to work on the Monday. It was a night never to be forgotten.
Also cousin Eric George Doubleday then 11-years-old was living in Dymond Road, Coventry, it was possibly on the night of 19 October when he was in a neighbour’s Anderson shelter, as his parents George and Gladys Doubleday were Air Raid Wardens on duty, unfortunately the Anderson Shelter took a direct hit and of the seven people in the shelter Eric was the only survivor as he was blown clear but still trapped under the rubble.
He broke his hip bone and was in Gulson Road Hospital. It was a frantic few days before his parents found out where he was. The Midland Daily Telegraph did an article on his rescue and a photo showing him sitting up in bed in hospital appeared on the 19th December edition.
It also mentioned that Betty Quinn helped to rescue him as she was his neighbour and they both recognised each other’s voices, she got a George Medal for her part. Eric was very brave and had no thought for himself only asking about his friends and parents to each new rescuer to arrive on the scene as he knew them all. His parents were safe thank goodness.
Isobel Hennigan, of Skipton North Yorkshire, for her parents George and Cecilia Roberts
70 Stories
In 2010, BBC Coventry & Warwickshire collected stories and memories [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0341k6f] from those who lived through the night of Thursday, 14 November 1940, otherwise known as the Coventry Blitz. Each individual memory has been saved and has been given to the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum for their archive.
Facebook comments
A collection of comments from Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/coventrycc/posts/10153796516530039].
Paul Sheehan
My 89 year old grandad spoke to me about this recently. He would only have been 14 at the time and he told me how he remembered seeing bombed out Coventry folk wandering around on Gosford Green shell shocked and still in their pyjamas having lost everything on that dreadful and infamous night. My grandad had lost his father and who would have been my great grandfather in the raid. I have nothing but complete pride and admiration for that brave generation of Coventrians who not only endured the terror and devastation of two Coventry Blitzes (April 1941 is often overlooked) but who also never allowed their spirits to be broken and went on to rebuild our city.
Robert Buckley
My late mum and dad came from Coventry and I was always told of the 14th November, mum lost house job and family as well as a birthday card?
Candis Ibberson
My Great Grandfather Christopher Kemp Wells was one of the carpenters that restored the roof in St Mary's Guildhall 1948
Alan Wilson
My grandfather was PCs 20 in Coventry police during the blitz, he was missing for 3 days before he turned up, he had been running a communications post in a bombed out house in Hillfields. His name was Edwin Brooks (Ted) he and his family including my mother lived in the police house on Hinckley Rd., Walsgrave.
Mandy Hall Tuck
My dad aged 81 born 1934, remembers very well. The Germans were always bombing, aged 7 no different from any other night as he was a young chap. He remembers his dad Leslie Albert Hall taking him down the next day on their bicycles to see the city burning. Many fires and many roads were blocked off due to bomb craters. My dad now lives in South Africa.
Andrew J Chandler
I have my mother's recollections. They were recorded in 'The Walsgrave History Project' in the mid-eighties. The Blitz is also why I now live in Hungary. My wife is from Coventry's twin town of Kecskemét, and we met on a teachers' exchange programme in 1989.
Nobby Clarke
My Dad (91) lived in Lower Ford St and when he got back home from the shelter the next morning he found a hole in his bedroom ceiling and an unexploded incendiary bomb on his bed. The warden came and put it in a bucket of water and took it away!.
Denise White
My ex husband never knew his father. He was only about 16 months old when his dad died. His dad was on air warden duty in Radford Rd Coventry. He'd gone up to the local church to check it out and a bomb went off. My husband's mother searched for him for three weeks before she eventually found which hospital her poor husband was in. He was barely recognisable as he was so badly burnt. The courageous man hung on until his wife found him and visited and then he died. His name was James White. Married to Lilian White, who ran a library and later a toy shop in Radford Rd.
Molly Zebrzuski (nee Lane), by her great-granddaughter Tabatha Stanley- Zebrzuski , aged 9
I wrote this letter about my great granny Zebrzuski who was in Coventry during the Blitz. I hope you can put this on your website for me so my great granny can read this and know how proud I am of her.
My great granny survived the war luckily. She was only 19 when the Second World War started and now is 95. I have been learning about the war and I interviewed her about her experiences.
When the blitz started she was in Coventry and Warwickshire hospital as a patient. Patients that were not bed bound were told to lay under the bed with a wash bowl on their head in case bombs fell on them or by them.
My great granny was in her bed when the wall next to her fell down and a male nurse threw himself over her, to shield her from anything hitting her. She was then taken down to the basement of the hospital. They left her there alone while they went to collect more patients. As a bomb screamed down, she screamed along with the sound, and a soldier ran in and hugged her until others were brought in so she wasn’t alone.
When the sirens ended, a baby’s cry rang out. A baby was born during the bombing in the same hospital. My great granny thought it was wonderful to hear.
The next day she was transferred to a hospital in Stratford upon Avon in an army ambulance. When she arrived she was put on a geriatrics ward as this was the only space for her. They thought she had been burnt because her face and hands were so black. After cleaning her up, they took off her bandage on her tummy and found a 3 inch shard of glass that had fallen down her nightwear and down her bandages in the blast.
Once my great granny was discharged home she had to look after her siblings as her mother died. She became the head of the household and fed everyone with what she got from the shops on rations.
She met and married my great grandad Zebrzuski after the war and they adopted my grandad. She now has three granddaughters and 10 great grandchildren and one great, great grandchild.
I feel proud of my great granny after all she has been through and she is still here to be able to tell us all her stories of the blitz. She still paints, knits and enjoys gardening and is doing great for 95. She is my super gran and we all love her.
She has tickets to go to the blitz anniversary event at Coventry Cathedral on 14 November and is looking forward to this a lot. I hope she enjoys herself.
Son's trip from Canada to remember mum at Blitz anniversary
One of the people at tomorrow's Blitz anniversary event has travelled from his home in Canada to remember his mum who died in the city over 70 years ago.
André Masters, of Victoria, Canada, thought there were no photos of his mother until a recent discovery, and now he has had a special headstone made to make sure she is remembered.
He said: "I came to Coventry from Canada on 11 November to commemorate the anniversary and to view the headstone we have erected for my mother.
"At the age of four I was living with my mother, Lilian, and two-year-old sister, Jacqueline, near the city centre. Our mother died in August 1942 and no photos of her remained until a recent find.
"In research of hundreds of blitz photos we came across a woman, recognisable to us as my mother Lilian, apparently taken later in the day after the bombing. I am at her side and she is holding my sister in her arms.
"She was six months pregnant with our brother John at the time but obviously malnourished as she was probably making sure we were well fed. Also we were poor and she wore no gloves despite it being winter. We lived on Bramble Street then.
"She could not cope with a third child and my brother, now deceased, had to be given up for adoption. My sister and I were with her until at least October 1941, and later she developed hepatitis from which she died. By then my sister and I had been evacuated to the village of Wormleighton.
"From there we were in different foster homes in and around Coventry and our main saviour was our Uruguayan grandmother Matilda Masters (formerly Diaz) who tried to arrange what might be best for us, and at one time during the war was said to have chauffeured the Mayor of Coventry in 1941.
"Later I lived with her from the age of 9 to 17.
"My sister always thought she was never loved or wanted as a child, especially as all she can remember is the various foster homes she was in after Wormleighton. Now we know that our mother loved us.
"When the photo of my mother was first seen by my daughter and me we were moved by her demeanour in the face of such adversity. There she stands; strong, unwavering and gazing through the misty veil of time into the future. Her eyes focus on ours as if to say 'I am not lost, I am just waiting for you to find me.'
"My granddaughter named her baby girl, Lilian.
"I have now had a headstone made for her grave, showing the blitz photos."
Ray Price
I was 7 years old when the Blitz happened. The air raid siren went off at around 7pm and I was having a wash in a tin bath in front of the fire. I was at my house in Fynford Road, just off Radford Road by the Daimler factory - which, during the war, manufactured armoured cars. Our Anderson shelter was just by the kitchen window though it shouldn’t have been there; it should have been at the bottom of the garden instead.
My sister was only a few months old when the air raids happened. Every time the sirens went off we had to put her in a gas mask that covered her whole body. She didn’t like it and screamed and screamed! This is what stopped us from getting into the shelter quickly as she wriggled and screamed.
When I was inside the shelter, I felt excited but then a bomb landed near us and I was apprehensive. We took in one small paraffin lamp and my mother used to make shadow shows on the walls to entertain us and stop us feeling scared.
My father was out and about fire watching across Coventry. He could see that fires were heading for our house and he came back and spent the rest of the night with us.
That night, the bombs whistled as they fell down and I had a funny feeling where your mouth unexpectedly dries up. Suddenly…BOOM! A bomb exploded right near us trying to hit the factory. We had only 2 beds and a couple of flasks of tea, in the air raid shelter. We were in there for 12 hours and it was very boring.
After the siren had sounded to come out of the shelter we went outside. Amazingly, no houses in my road had been bombed. However, my school (Radford) had all burnt down. I didn’t feel sad about it. I went to what was left of the school to see if I could get any paper and pencils but my teacher was standing there. She took my friend and me to one side and tried to teach us. That was the last time we ever saw her.
The morning after the blitz, I was going to get some vinegar and I walked past some dead Polish airman who was staying in the Coventry at this time. A person told me that they saw parachutes coming down. He thought they were German soldiers but they were landmines! The soldiers started shooting them and as a result, they exploded in the air! This is an interesting fact that not very many people know!
I was in all blitzes but I was evacuated after the big air raids. We were treated badly whilst we were evacuated and I didn’t like it at all. I missed my family and friends. My brother and I tried to escape a few times but were taken back to our evacuation hosts. In the end my father came to get us and unfortunately we were in Coventry when it was blitzed again in April 1941.
Even today, 14 November 2015 (75 years later), when I hear air raid sirens on the TV or Coventry Transport museum (where they have a Blitz exhibition), I still get the dry funny sensation in my mouth.
Alanâs Blitz night dash to help injured warden
With bombs falling and streets filled with rubble and craters, 16-year-old Alan Hartley faced a desperate two-and-a-half mile cycle ride to the city centre to help an injured colleague.
Alan was a messenger on the night of 14 November 1940, posted on Grayswood Avenue, Coundon, when a number of incendiary bombs fell. The bombs had a new type of explosive cap, one of which exploded and covered the Head Warden’s face and hands in white hot metal.
Alan ran to the ARP post to call for an ambulance, but the telephone wires had been shot down and the only way to get help was to cycle into the city centre, despite the continuing air aid.
On the way, he had to stop under the railway arches in Spon End to shelter from shrapnel and bomb fragments. And when he got to St. John’s Church on Spon Street, he came across a large bomb crater which was so deep he could see the River Sherbourne flowing beneath the street.
Alan had to scramble around the crater with his bicycle on his back and then make his way up Smithford Street to the Council House, where he joined the queue to report the incident to a policeman and an ambulance was sent out to help.
A time to remember
70 years on, an appropriate time for commemoration and remembrance of the dreadful air raid on the city of Coventry in 1940.
After the passage of this long period of time, fewer citizens of the city are here today to remember, but those survivors, as I am, will never forget.
Cllr Brian Kelsey, Lord Mayor of Coventry City Council
What our parents and grandparents went through
Being only 53 years old I don’t remember the Blitz, but I know what my parents and grandparents went through. I never really understood what it must have been like until earlier this year when I watched a TV documentary.
The terror of that night came home to me for the first time and I really felt a sense of the ferocity of the attack. I will be there on Sunday 14th to pay my respects to those who perished and those who lived on.
Cathy Clapinson
Proud to be associated with Coventry
So proud to be associated with Coventry. Thinking of all the brave men and women who both died and survived the Blitz. Remembered at this time and kept in my prayers.
Carmel Palmer.
A time to honour and remember
We honour, remember and commemorate the selflessness, sacrifice and heroism of generations past who gave and sacrificed so much so that we can live in freedom and peace.
They make us proud to be Coventrians and proud of not only what they did for our city, but for our nation.
We will remember them and honour their sacrifice forever.
In remembrance
Rajay Naik
My Childhood Memories
My Childhood Memories
In Coventry – on top of a hill
The rumble of caterpillar tanks,
The strange grinding mill
Makes line on the tarmac flanks
The sound of the hooter, the sound of the plane
The sound of the shooter, the sound of the rain
I grew up in this place with the excitement of war,
My dad wanted peace to fashion wood with a saw
Grayswood on the hill there were not many trees
Just a long row of shops – with ration books you got cheese.
To protect form the bombs the Andersen was under the table,
Or the pill box outside was cramped like a stable
This was the world at our front door,
Out back in the garden was a fantasy store.
In front of the house the bombs really dropped
At the back of the house the Indians were stopped
Amid the rhubarb and apple trees on broom-handled horses
We galloped with ease til the cowboys joined forces
Ity seemed to me that I didn’t fit
In the front of the house where the warriors sit
In the gun turret as the arms went by
And holes in the road where dead bodies lie.
Inside the house too, it was full of strife,
But to us children ‘out back’ was a different life
So memories fade as they always will
Is it peace we remember or war force still?
Written in 1993 by Sandy Chapman (the first poem I wrote)
A time for reflection
A time for reflection and a reminder of what the people of the city went through.
It is so important that we educate the young and never forget.
Geoff, Julia and Bianca Booth.
Great Uncle Tom
I only learnt of my Great Uncle’s sad demise 14/11/40 earlier this year, as I was tracked down through the West Midlands Police Museum. They were looking for living relatives of his to attend a service, and the unveiling of the Roll of Honour at Lloyd House Birmingham for police officers whom had died in service. (Great Uncle Tom was brother to my grandmother. She and my Grandfather divorced either during the War or just after the end of the War. My father and his siblings were brought up by their father and step-mother. Grandmother moved to another City, hence contact being lost with her, and her extended family). My father was only 3 on the night of the Blitz, he passed away 3 years ago. He clearly never knew of this personal connection with the night of the Blitz. I have since been to the mass burial site at London Road and see Great Uncle Tom’s name acknowledged.
Thomas Rowland Lowry was the youngest of 6 children. Having 3 older sisters, and 2 older brothers. He worked at British Thomson-Houston Company Ltd. He was a member of the Police auxiliary messenger service. He was killed whilst on duty in Jordan Well where a bomb landed on the air raid shelter where he was taking refuge. He was aged 16. To date, he is the youngest serving Police officer within the West Midlands to die in service.
Julie Healy