John's story

It was an isolation hospital, with wards well separated, and open space in between. A delayed action bomb fell close enough to my ward that it was decided that we should be moved to another, even during the raid. I remember being carried by a soldier, and the glow in the sky from the fires in the City center.

Suddenly we both heard the 'whoosh' of a bomb actually falling and we quickly dived under a bush, and he sheltered me with his body before we continued to the new ward. With the typical resilience of children, I went back to sleep again, and in the morning we discovered that the nearest ward to our new one had suffered a direct hit, and I remember the twisted roof girders with no other roof covering left.

Coventry was defended by barrage balloons, which were there to keep the raiders at a height convenient for anti-aircraft guns. The standard naval anti-aircraft gun at the time was the bofors gun, which was a multibarrelled gun with a distinctive sound, and was therefore known as a pom-pom. They were actually made in the City, and the factory which made them had a battery on the roof. The sound of these guns so far from the sea surpised more than one sailor in the City at the time of an air raid.