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These chapters summarise an interview with Gertrude Alice Bloore.

Gertrude was a housewife in Coventry throughout the war, looking after her husband, father, grandfather and child. A second child was born towards the end of the war.

Gertrude's war is memorable mainly for the way that people on the home front endured the privations, the hardships and the constant dangers. How people got on with life with no real feeling that things would ever get better. Gertrude had a bad war.

(Trudy) You never hear what happened to an individual person on the home front.
(Jim) You were quite young when the war began, weren't you, Trudy?
(Trudy) Yes. How old would I be, I was thirty-eight, no, ... it began in '38 and I was born in 1912.
(Jim) So you were what, twenty ...
(Trudy)Twenty-six.
(Jim) So what were you doing at the time, when the war started?
(Trudy) Well, I was an ordinary house wife, I'd got a very good husband.
I looked after him, and the house, and me baby, a couple of dogs ... and they came round and asked if I could put a lodger up. Well, I'd got a bedroom, and so I said yes, and then my father and grandfather who lived in two ... well, they'd got a bungalow each, 'cause their wives were dead. Then they said, "Well, you might do a bit of this-and-that and the other for us.
It were a lot of hard work. And mainly chilblains, and queuing in one winter's morning.
(Jim) So you were living in one house.
(Trudy) I lived in a house, and father and grandfather got a bungalow each. It was along ... somewhere out Canley way, and the Standard Motor Works were quite handy.
So it were quite quiet for a bit, but what always tickled me was the fact that they came round with Andersen Shelters, and my grandfather said "Oh, I've come through two wars - I ain't gonna run like a rat in a trap." He was first in.
Well, anyhow, the bombs dropping, and we struggled through that, what with the old chap acting awkward. Unfortunately, my husband was in the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard, 'cause that was a joke "Who guards the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard?" There was quite a bit of humour about.
So I used to get my son, the dogs and the old chap down into the shelter, when the bombing was on. And we weren't affected too badly where I was, 'cause they concentrated on the motor works.
Still, we got shot at, the lodger and me, we were standing in the garden and he pushed ... said "Get down! Get down!", so we both lay down, and it must have been an observation plane popping over to have a look at the lie of the land, and he let flew a few bullets.
Tickled him to death, 'cause the lad looked up and said "Oh my God", and he was killing himself laughing. That all passed ... little things like that happened.
The same young man, he was unfortunate. He worked at some works in Coventry, everything was very hush-hush.
'Cause that was one of the biggest jokes of the war, and it caused a lot of unpleasantness: "Be like dad, keep mum." Well, all the women were half-killing themselves in the factories, so that didn't go down very well.
But anyway, the lad was due somewhere where he came from, to see his girlfriend, he were coming back late one night. He got a taxi, and he met the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guards, held him up, and the taxi-driver wouldn't stop, so they let fly a few bullets, and unfortunately, one went through the centre of his right hand.
That was all very traumatic and all very upsetting. He was a very nice young man.
But I think one of the worst things that happened really within my personal ... was a house in Beechwood Avenue, it backed onto the golf course, and the man ... it was quite a big house, an old house with cellar, he'd reinforced the cellar ...
(Trudy) He'd reinforced the cellar, and he took his wife and his three daughters down on the worst night of the war. Well, he had a landmine go through, and of course the cellar was shut off from the world, filled with water and they were all drowned.
But you got used to it. My husband's mother, she absolutely swore blind "Oh, there won't be a war, Chamberlain will see to that." Well of course, Chamberlain had already been derided in parliament: "God, man, why didn't you get ...", I think it were John Amory said that.
Anyway, when they got to the point ... so, that was all very nasty, very unpleasant. Still, she did believe there was a war on when a landmine went through the houses opposite her house.
But it's the chilblains.
We used to start queuing, we used to take the lad to his grandmothers, she lived in Earlsdon Street way. Often, I'd go and stand in the queue, and My God, I had chilblains, we all had chilblains ... made our lives a misery for a year or two. We put up with a lot.
And one of the current phrases was, if you was in a queue: "We're here for the duration", all little things like that.
Well, we'd been to the ???, you know. Still, pretty ghastly, really.
What happened to the young man who got his hand shot, he came out of hospital and he went back to work. I don't know where he came from, everything was very hush-hush. The girl's father made it his business to come round and see me.
He said "What do you think about it?" I said "Well, it's a bad job." So he said "Well, I don't know whether to put my foot down on it or not." I said "That's up to you, it's no business of mine, but" I said "I wouldn't. Wait and see how things turn out."
So with that, he went off in a huff. Still, people in a huff never bothered me a lot. We can all huff and puff if we want to.
Now there were quite some houses in Prince of Wales Road, they took a landmine.
They used to travel, travel, travel, and then explode, you see, but it was doing a lot of damage. Knocked over half-a-dozen houses at a time, straight through them.
(Jim) All in bouncing along the ground first.
(Trudy) Mm. But what made it worse of course ...
Mother, she had a lodger, he'd been idiot enough to join one of the territorial businesses for weekend ... mainly for weekends out, 'cause he used to go on a little camping trip, and he was fished out of Dunkirk with his one arm badly mauled about. He finished up as a lift-man in one of the factories. He was very very bitter, his language was terrible, his right arm was ... "Well, I wonder what took me the right side? Funny that is."
Time passed, and he was improved a bit, but since ...
The ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Front wasn't all a joke, at all. There were jokes, rather macabre ones really, 'cause if you didn't, you'd have gone potty.
Always remember the old man, he was in his seventies, and I took him his little butter ration. It was only two ounces. He said "That's no good to me, I can use that up on one slice of toast." "Well", I said "it's all you're getting."
I said "I've only got five ration books" and then with the child's book, well what with the boarder and one thing and another. He said "I used to eat better at home, you know." I said "Well, you damn-well go home, mate."
He was really very nasty.
Coventry itself was exactly the same to look at, as the day before it was bombed. I've got a book on Coventry ... pictures ... and the centre of the city was exactly the same before the bombing as it had been for years and years and years.
The only thing really bothered, all those years ago, it was a circle of very expensive houses, but they'd been purchased and turned into shops. But the ???, that was ??? the bottoms. That decided to take a beating. It was the cathedral, but Trinity Church, next to ...
(Jim) ... wasn't touched, I know.
(Trudy) All that side went. Patrick's went, that was a very well known shop, and several very well known shops went, where the museum is now. They all went.
I think they thought they'd probably got ... they did, they just got their bearings wrong somehow, 'cause they probably thought it was a factory ... but I don't think they bothered where they dropped 'em. Not really.
But the rationing was the worst, for quite some time ... then there was the clothing coupons.
Ron's mother worked for a lady who gave her a coat, a nice big heavy coat, and she didn't want it, so she said "I'll get my neighbour to make an overcoat for Bill out a' that." 'Cause by that time he'd started school. Well, he wouldn't have it on. I got his photo somewhere, wearing it.
But he really was a bit of ... ??? much of a child, but all those sort of things, they went on and everybody experienced much the same. It were no laughing matter, really, at all. Rather difficult laughing, you'd to stop yourself being thoroughly upset, with all the little things that were said.
To be in the queue in that weather ... they'd talk about the chilblain. Well it were a wonder it didn't cure 'em, because they were cursed enough. Anyway, I managed to get hold of a pair of (size) four wellingtons, 'cause I only take a three, and with a couple of woollen socks inside ... because we had some very severe winters, you know.
Then there was another lodger ... about four or five altogether. They'd only stop a few months, because, being where we were, there was quite a number of widows letting rooms, and they nearly all moved on. One went back to one of the Scandinavian countries, 'cause his wife had got killed or something.
But there was no let-up somehow. And of course, Winston would get up in parliament, and usually say "When we've won the war ..."
(Jim) There wasn't that feeling, where you were ...
(Trudy) Yes ... when we'd won the war. But he was the right man for the moment, there's no doubt about that. To hear him talk. He'd used to say "Pull yourself together."
(Jim) They kicked him out after the war, though, didn't they?
(Trudy) Mm. You braced yourself.
It was a pity over Chamberlain, really. I think he was a very nice, kindly man.
I remember one night, we'd been to the cinema, and he stood at the top of the ... you know, the thing you get off ... gangway or something, waving this little bit of paper: "Peace in our time."
So everybody in the cinema, some clapped and some booed, and I had a most terrible row with my father. I went back and I said ... I said "The man's a fool."
So "Oh", he said, "you want war. You'd enjoy a good war" he said, "but I've been in one" and all that. There were a lot of sort of up and down arguments. But you see there was one, but Hitler made an absolute fool of him.
The French, they'd got the Maginot Line, but they went round it. That was a complete waste of money on the French part, but I can't go into finer details, or I should upset myself, and you as well.
My husband was a toolmaker, he wasn't called up at all, he got a ...
Somebody got to make the stuff. He made quite a few ... down from Victoria Road, at the bottom, and he turned it into a fishmarket after the war.
Well, the man named Croft, he went to live in Jersey, and Mister Corner ... Johnny Corner, he retired through old age, and they sold it as a fish-market afterwards. Still, that's all by the way.
(Kay) Did they move Corner Croft? Corner Croft, didn't they move up to one side of the ring road, I don't know what the road is called, where the spiritualist church is.
(Trudy) They made quite a lot for planes .. the seat that was all mount, you know ...
(Kay) ... ejector seats.
(Trudy) ... and all that sort of stuff, little doings. But it was all ...
He liked it to do the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Guard stunt at night. They'd come home and get into his kit and buzz off for the night, come back looking absolutely wacked, have a bit of breakfast, and go to work ... but he lost a lot of weight.
We had one or two really nasty winters, which didn't help, then I got preggers and had a baby in forty-four ... the worst possible year of the war. Everything was absolutely at a standstill with regards (to) necessities.
We had coupons for the clothing. Difficult, but one way or another we kept scratching through. People'd give you a bit that'd got grown-up children. I sometimes think that's what made the children so cross. It was the general atmosphere of brooding misery, really ... no doubt about it.

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