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.