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My name's Dorothy Bishop; my husband George and I were living at 24 Grasmere Avenue, Coventry during the early part of the war with our two little boys, Clive and Paul.
1940 was a particularly traumatic year for us as we were bombed out of our house. Clive was 4 and-a-half and Paul 16 months old, and during the frequent bombing we used to retire to a brick shelter we shared with our friends the Takens who lived across our road. We all had semi-detached houses. Tommy Taken was well-educated and worked with George at Armstrong-Siddeley, the car manufacturers in Coventry; neither were conscripted into the forces as their occupations were reserved. Armstrong-Siddeley made aeroplanes for the RAF during the war. George also had a problem with his sight in one eye which meant that he wouldn't have been suitable for the forces. Tommy and his extremely good-looking wife Madge had two children; John who was 2 and-a-half and Anne, an 8-month-old baby.
We'd been sharing a shelter with the Takens because our own shelter had been flooded in the torrential rain we'd been having. They'd put in an old sofa on one side and bunk-beds on the other. When the bombing started, Madge and I sat on the sofa holding our babies while Clive and John were in the bunk-beds - John on top and Clive in the bottom one.
The bombing that night in November was terrifying - I'd converted to Catholicism in my early 20's and I carried a rosary with me. Madge begged me to repeat 'Hail Mary's' over and over again as she found it so comforting, which surprised me as I'd always thought of her as so poised and efficient. I was praying that we'd be spared so that we could bring our children up.
When the bombing subsided Clive was crying - we assumed the boys were frightened but Clive was unhappy because John had peed on him from the upper bunk ! During this lull a policeman came to the shelter and told us we had to get out of Coventry - a landmine had blown all the windows and doors off our houses, a warden had been killed and more bombing was inevitable. He told the men not to go back into the houses, but George was determined to collect a few essentials. Afterwards he said that of course we couldn't return to our home because there was no gas, electricity or water as well as no doors or windows, and ceilings were falling in every room. The only thing Clive remembers is that the bomb shelter door had been blown off its hinges and George took his shoelaces off and used them to tie it back on again.
Tragically many people lost their lives as they'd been in fixed shelters under their stairs and weren't able to get out.
Luckily Tommy had a car - his father owned a large garage at Foleshill - so the men loaded two double mattresses on to the roof and we went to Frankton near Rugby. We were turned back many times by soldiers because of bomb craters in the road, but eventually we drove out on the Kenilworth road. I remember we just knocked on a farmhouse door at Frankton and they took us in; we stayed there until February 1941. Afterwards we moved to Manchester where my eldest sister Hilda and her husband Jack Wintringham lived with their little boy Anthony in Northenden, until George could find another house for us all to live in. Sadly we lost touch with the Takens.
People who lost their homes and possessions during the war could apply for a grant but George wouldn't do this as he said we were all lucky to have escaped alive and uninjured - theis infuriated Jack who thought we had so little compared to many other families who were claiming, but George could not be persuaded.
Somehow we coped as everyone was in the same boat and we just HAD to cope. But I've always regretted losing a Chesterfield sofa which had been Grandma Bishop's, and my lovely Burberry raincoat - it's the little details I remember.

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