We were a farming family of four, but our numbers had been temporally augmented by relatives seeking refuge from the German blitz on nearby Coventry. With grandparents, aunts, and uncles we were transfixed by a huge armada of German aircraft flying in successive waves over our Warwickshire farmhouse one night in November 1940.
We had gathered in the kitchen, our all-purpose room. It was lit by oil lamps and heated by an ancient cooking range. Our blackout curtains were carefully closed so that the air-raid warden would not embarrass us by shouting ‘put that light out’. Our windowpanes were firmly taped to prevent glass shards flying about in the event of a bomb blast.
The massed bombers of Hitler’s Luftwaffe always made a distinctive sound. Numerous bombers contributed to it that night. There had been sixteen or so raids on Coventry since the war began and the bombers had flown over our house on every occasion. Familiarity had given us as false sense of security and our farm was some miles from Hitler’s target. Perhaps that is why we were unmoved by the high-pitched noise of a bomb passing over our roof.
I have wondered how it was that a German crewman released a bomb that night to whistle over our farmhouse and landed in one of our fields. The explosion it made sent us diving for cover under our big mahogany table. The dutiful and diligent airmen of Lufftflottt 3 had been sent to burn the city of Coventry not to disturb the cattle on an English dairy farm. Their codename for the raid was ‘Mondscheinsonate’. We did not know this, otherwise we may have found the irony provoking.
The air crews would have armed their bombs and opened the bomb doors before they flew over our house on their approach to the waiting city. A mechanical failure in one aircraft must have released ‘our’ bomb. By good fortune it had enough forward momentum to clear our house and land in a field mercifully free of livestock. It did, however, cause several cows in an adjacent field to abort their calves.
Coventry’s meagre defences were easily breached. Many wondered why and some still do. So, the Germans flyers bombed Coventry – and us – on the night of 14th November 1940. Some sources suggest that they killed some 380 people and injured 850. Only one German aircraft was confirmed as destroyed.
When it was light enough, we went to look at our bomb crater. It was a small and clearly caused by an incendiary bomb. A strange, innocent looking metal artefact remained undamaged in the fresh soil. No one could work out what it was. It could well have been part of the bomb’s attachment to the aircraft and thus account for its premature release.
The raid was intended to break Britain’s resolve and cause her leaders to sue for peace. Instead, it encouraged an escalation of mutual destruction leading inexorably to Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki.
Not long ago my sister and I talked about how we climbed from under the protection of our big mahogany table and watched the firestorm light up the sky over Coventry. She remembered, as did I, that one of the aircraft was caught for a while in a searchlight’s beam. I had begun to think my vivid memory of the event could have been false. Our accounts, however, matched substantially. Long after the war my sister died in her adopted hometown in Germany.
DON'T KILL ME NOW 