Ena shook her head. ‘Can’t go yet.’ Lifting the box, she carefully lowered it into the bunker and stood to the side while her father placed the concrete and steel cover on top. After snapping on the padlock, Ena put up her thumbs.
‘Let’s get out of here!’ her father shouted.
Aware that she was holding her breath, Ena exhaled and followed him across the room.
As she reached the door, she felt the floor vibrating through the soles of her shoes. She held onto the doorframe and looked back into the room. As if she were a spectator in a silent film, she watched the windows blow in. The power of the blast ripped the blackout curtains to shreds, tearing them from their fittings, and shards of glass rained down on the desks and chairs.
Looking past the debris to the concrete bunker, Ena whooped with relief. It was still upright, still solid; the bomb blast hadn’t touched it.
Turning and following her father, Ena ran across the factory floor, dodging lathes, boring machines, and other heavy apparatus. She was halfway between the annexe and the factory’s main door when the lights flickered. Already feeling disorientated because she couldn’t hear, Ena was plunged into darkness and quickly lost her bearings. She stopped and closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them they would be accustomed to the dark in the windowless factory. They were not.
Unable to see or hear, Ena walked in what she thought was the direction of the door. She saw a flicker of light. A pinprick at first that grew into a faint beam – and she ran towards it. ‘Damn!’ she screamed, as her hip collided with the corner of a steel workbench. ‘Dad? Is that you?’
‘Ena? Stay where you are, love. I’m coming.’
‘Dad, I can see a light. I’ll make my way towards it.’ Her words were lost in the roar of German planes thundering overhead. Arms outstretched, so she didn’t walk into any other work stations, Ena made her way one tentative step at a time towards the faint beam of light emitted by her father’s ARP lantern. Swinging like a pendulum, lighting up any obstacles in its path, the beam slowly moved towards her until her father was at her side.
Trembling, Ena threw her arms around her father. He patted her quickly before taking her hands in his and guiding them to the belt of his coat. Ena held on tightly as Thomas Dudley retraced his steps and led his daughter to safety. When the factory’s entrance came into view, they ran for it.
Outside, Ena looked up in horror. Illuminated by a full moon, formation after formation of German bombers were silhouetted against a sapphire blue sky. Like flocks of migrating birds, the Luftwaffe soared over Lowarth before banking steeply to the west.
‘Come on, Ena!’ her father shouted. Mesmerised by the sight above her, Ena was unable to move. ‘Come on!’ he shouted again. He crossed his hands in front of her face. Ena shook her head. She could hear again. ‘We need to put as much distance as we can between us and the factory!’ he shouted.
The noise was excruciating. Ena put her hands over her ears. Nodding that she had heard, she followed him to the factory’s air raid shelter. At the entrance, an explosion halted her. She looked back. A bomb had exploded next to the boundary wall, hurling bricks everywhere. Open-mouthed, she watched the factory’s main door, which she and her father had just escaped through, bow and crumple. Then, as if it were cardboard, it disappeared into the building. Her father grabbed her arm and hauled her into the shelter.
‘I thought they’d be going for Bruntingthorpe, or Bitteswell, but they’re flying over the aerodromes. It’s as if they don’t know they’re there.’ Ena looked at her father. ‘They must know, mustn’t they, Dad?’
‘They know all right, but it isn’t the aerodromes they’re interested in. Listen!’
Ena strained her ears for any changes in the notes of the planes’ engines that might give her a clue as to where they were heading.
The realisation hit her and her father at the same time. They looked at each other. Ena shook her head, too shocked to speak. The distant rumbling of heavily-armed German bomber planes, interspersed with the high-pitched wail of air raid sirens, was followed almost immediately by the rumble of explosives.
A few minutes later, they heard the rat-a-tat-tat of anti-aircraft guns.
‘Coventry!’ her father said, with a catch in his voice. ‘They’re bombing Coventry.’ The first crump of bombs was followed by a second, and a third, and so it went on.
Shivering in the cold November night air, Ena listened as wave after wave of German incendiaries tore through the city of Coventry.
Hours later, Lowarth’s siren sounded the all-clear, and Ena’s father, in his capacity as chief air raid warden, instructed the workforce to assemble at the factory gate.
When every employee of Silcott Engineering who had clocked in that morning was accounted for, Thomas Dudley handed over to the factory’s owner, Herbert Silcott.
Raising his voice to be heard above the dull, continuous, sound of bombs exploding, and the chattering and cursing of the women, Herbert Silcott thanked them for the work they had done that day and told them to go home. ‘Tomorrow!’ he shouted, ‘I shall get the builders in to assess the damage. If it is not too serious – and if they can begin work immediately – we should be back in production early next week, hopefully Monday.’
One of the women said she couldn’t afford to lose a day’s pay by not working on Friday. ‘You’ll be paid,’ Silcott assured her. Several women, shouting at the same time, said they couldn’t afford to go without their money either. Silcott put his hands up and called for hush. ‘No one will be short in their wage packets.
