Sylvia's Memories of Leamington and the Air Raids

I was married from England Crescent [Leamington]. Before that, I lived in a council house and, from there, it was a mile either way from the bombs. When the lights went off and the sirens went, Mum pushed us under the stairs into a cubby hole; Dad was in the army. As soon as we heard the sirens, that was it. We waited until the buzzer went then it was all clear and we went out to see what damage was done.

We heard on the grapevine that they had tried to bomb Lockheed [a major local factory, not far away whose office block was machine-gunned in 1942] and the railway, which was at the bottom of our garden. There was a bomb - it dropped on The Close. [Hall's Close, Whitnash, 20 November 1940 - an unexploded shell fell in open ground].