Val, 5 years old at the time
I was 5 years old when war was declared; I lived in Coventry with my parents and two teenage sisters. I remember playing in the garden when a neighbour called to tell us that she had just heard that we were at war with Germany. Although I did not understand what that meant, I realised it must be something serious as both my mother and her friend were upset and crying.
My father was too old to be called up so he worked in a factory making aeroplane parts. In the evening, he went out again on duty as an air raid warden. For a few months all was quiet. Air raid shelters were built, barrage balloons were raised and lowered and every now and then, air raid sirens could be heard. I hated the large silver balloons which seemed so menacing and the loud wailing of the sirens frightened me.
I was at a school which was evacuated to Stoneleigh Abbey where I found it very different from life in a busy city. We slept on camp beds in the ballroom and were given navy blue blankets. I had my bed under a window and was allowed to put my Teddy on the windowsill.
I had always been afraid of the Nuns. Although they were kind, their dark habits frightened me but I was delighted to find that the teacher who was sleeping with us was our music teacher and not a Nun. She was very kind and comforted children who were homesick.
My mother and sisters visited me regularly. On one occasion they came with my uncle in his car. Before they left, we were all crying; I just wanted to go home. My mother eventually agreed that I could go back with them. She said that if we were going to be killed, at least it would be all together. Mother taught me until the end of term and then I went to Stoke National C of E School.
Before the Germans started bombing, my father had built an Anderson shelter in the garden. Whenever the sirens sounded, we went into it as quickly as we could, carrying food and drink with us. It was always cold and damp but we had a paraffin heater inside. The fumes from the heater made us all sick. Some nights we would stay with an aunt who lived on the outskirts of the city and I loved being with my cousins. We were there on the night of the Coventry Blitz, 14th November 1940.
The Cathedral was bombed and virtually destroyed. My uncle’s shelter was flooded so when the siren sounded, my mother, aunt and two sisters went to a street shelter and my uncle took the rest of us to the shelter next door. I remember looking up at the sky which was alight with searchlights and exploding shells, looking like a giant firework display. I was the last to go down the steps when a bomb dropped very close by. The blast lifted me off my feet and I fell down the ladder. I was lucky and only had some broken glass in my hair. There was so much noise and chaos and everyone was crying.
We were worried about the rest of the family but at about three in the morning a policeman came to tell us that our family was safe but there had been a lot of damage in the city. The next day we went home to find just one broken window. My mother went to check on a nearby friend. The house had been bombed but they were all safe. The roof and the outside walls had disappeared but the stairs survived. Hundreds of people had been killed that night because the firemen could not get enough water to put the fires out.
Soon afterwards my parents decided that I should be evacuated again, this time until the bombing had ended. Our school was evacuated to Leamington Spa. Lined up at the railway station, we all had luggage labels pinned on our coats. My mother and sisters came to the railway station to wave goodbye and we all cried. When we arrived in Leamington Spa we went to the Malt House where we had to wait for someone to collect us. Two ladies came and asked us to go with them. One was the headmistress of the local school and the other was her sister. The schoolhouse was next door to the school and this was to be our home until the end of the war.
We soon settled in and we were treated kindly. The house that we lived in had no running water and no flushing toilet. The toilet was at the end of the garden and the smell was always terrible. Every morning we had to fetch clean drinking water.
The next two years were very peaceful and I met my mother each Sunday. We were so excited and we had plenty of freedom. We spent our time climbing trees, fishing and doing all the things that a country girl would do, so different to a city. Some of our lessons were taught in a nearby stables. They were well cleaned out and painted white. My mother made all our clothes so we were well dressed.
I went home for my sister’s wedding to Bill, a bomber pilot and that was a happy weekend for us all. Soon after that Bill was killed in a raid over Germany, along with my other sister’s boyfriend who was the navigator in the same aircraft. Family grief was terrible.
Eventually all evacuees returned home to Coventry and I passed the scholarship to the Grammar School. When VE and VJ day came, there was great rejoicing with street parties all over the city. It took some time for the family to get back to normal. Fathers, husbands and sons returned home but it took a long time till sweet rationing was ended.