Memories of Carlo Luigi Mogano and Childhood

My grandfather, Carlo Luigi Mogano, born in 1880, was the illegitimate child of the Count of Petenengo and a kitchen maid. At 21 he was given a dowry and told to make his own way. The fact that he was given 2 Christian names was unusual and indicated he came from a good family. He made his way to London got married and moved to the Isle of Wight, where he was the Head Waiter of the Grand Hotel.

In WW1 he was called up for National Service in Italy, but he was declined as he was too small. He joined the British Army and was accepted, but I don't know anything other than he was in the Army in 1914. They had 4 children.

At the start of WWII, he was considered an alien and wasn't allowed to live near the coast, so he moved to Coventry where my father was living. After the war, he went back to the Isle of Wight.

I was born in 1939 and was living in Coventry when it was blitzed in 1941, which I remember. We lived about half a mile from the GEC factory in Bromley Drive, Stoke, Coventry. We heard the planes coming over and we took shelter under a metal table. After the raid was over my parents went upstairs and found a paving slab in the middle of their bed, it had come through the roof.

This was the third house we had been bombed out of - Cheverel Avenue in Radford. Father was a foreman on the assembly line making the Ferret armoured car. Then we moved to Earlsdon, but I can't remember the street name other than that I just remember playing in bomb craters, etc
Coventry was a mess - the bombers were aiming for GEC and Daimler, where Dad worked.

I remember the food office in Coventry and getting bottles of orange juice. I was never hungry - bread and milk used to come around on a horse and cart, Savage's bread and Co-op milk. I went to a Kenilworth school that was run by nuns, I used to get the bus to Pool Meadow and get another bus from there. I don't remember Mother working outside the home; I had a brother 2 years older than me. Father did his apprenticeship in Ventnor and used to drive up to Coventry for work and liked Coventry, so moved there; at one time there were 200 car factories.

I remember the street parties at the end of the war - a melee of kids screaming, flags flying, tables everywhere. I don't ever remember seeing soldiers, but a couple of female relatives who used to visit from the Isle of Wight who were in the Navy.