Forgotten Blitz remembered

It is Coventry’s forgotten Blitz - a footnote in history eternally overshadowed by events five months earlier. But over two nights from April 8, 1941, the city was once again attacked by waves of German bombers. The combined length of the attacks mirrored that of the November Blitz, hundreds were killed or injured and yet more historic landmarks were damaged, including Christ Church, King Henry VIII School and the Coventry & Warwickshire Hospital. Four of the city’s six George Medals for bravery were won that week. AS bombs rained down from the sky, they clawed at the rubble with their bare hands to reach the injured and dying.

For those entombed in the blackened remains of Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital, three angels had come to save them.

Fighting through the smoke, sparks and shattered glass to reach those who needed them most, these unlikely heroines brought hope when all hope seemed lost.

Mary Beardshall, Emma Horne and Joyce Burton were ordinary women whose extraordinary bravery 77 years ago would earn them a George Medal from the King.

On the night of April 8, 1941, the three were on duty at the busy hospital when the dreaded air raid sirens sounded once more.

It was one of the few places in the city which should have been safe, but the symbolic red cross on the roof instead became a marker for death.

The building took ten direct hits and 25 bombs landed nearby, killing several doctors and nurses and more than 30 patients.

Operating the switchboard that night was porter Mary Beardshall, of Avon Street, Stoke, who suffered a fractured skull as the walls blew in.

Ignoring her injuries the 28-yearold mum-of-four put out incendiaries with her hands before holding up a collapsing beam to allow several people to escape.

Later that night she inched along a ledge to Alexandra Ward where she helped patients trapped under blocks of concrete.

Emma Horne, 40, of Bath Street, Hillfields, was known as Sister Pat.

She calmly evacuated patients after her ward on the second floor took a direct hit, and later helped a fellow nurse trapped by debris from a delayed-action bomb.

Two surgical wards were also hit, trapping patients beneath falling brickwork as more bombs exploded.

Matron Joyce Burton, 44, was a model of calm as she worked to free them and give them first aid.

Two days later another woman’s remarkable bravery would also earn her a George Medal.

Margaret Brown, 22, of Longford, was a works nurse at Alfred Herbert and at night was attached to the Holbrooks division of the St John Ambulance Brigade. When a house in Hen Lane, Holbrooks, was bombed she tunnelled through the rubble and rescued a fatally injured 19-year-old youth.

She stayed with him for more than an hour before going on to save lives and deal with more casualties at Brigade HQ, in Wheelwright Lane, Holbrooks, which took a direct hit.

Mary is thought to have moved to Poland after the war, and Joyce and Emma both died in the 1960s.

One of the nurses on duty that night was 19-year-old Beti Howe.

She survived the war and went on

to become a mum, grandma and great-grandma before passing away in February 2010, aged 88.

But in an interview with the Telegraph 12 years ago, Beti recalled the moment the Luftwaffe returned.

“I was working in casualty that night as one casualty after the other was brought in,” she said.

“One old chap looked up from his trolley and said in a broad Coventry accent ‘when the next one goes off, duck, you dive under me trolley!’ But of course what we had been trained to do was to protect the patient, not the other way round.

“There were so many casualties that night that we ran out of instruments, and the electricity went off so we could not sterilise any more, nor indeed operate without light

“Many of the patients had been taken into a cellar of the hospital for safety where they were being tended by doctors and nurses.

“In one corner a mattress had been placed. What no one knew was that beneath it lay an unexploded bomb, which exploded and killed patients and possibly two doctors and several nurses, including my friend, a Polish nurse called Brinkarovna.

“She had lost both of her parents to the Germans and came to England to be near her brother.”

Beti completed her training in 1943, just before her first marriage, and had two children, Sue and Jane.

She was theatre sister at Paybody Hospital and then moved back to Coventry and Warwickshire Hospital in the 1960s and was sister of Smith-Clarke and Elizabeth wards. She then moved into nurse training and went to London where she attained her teaching diploma.

She returned to Coventry and became a senior nurse tutor at Walsgrave until she retired in 1978.

In 1974 she married again, to Joe, and the couple lived in Allesley.