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. 

That is my memory of the war except for the time my friends and I were machine gunned when going back to school one dinner time but that’s another story.