The night 16 Coventrians died in Kenilworth trying to escape the Blitz

Dutchman, Rebbonk:

SEPT 1939, not only the gov't swamped us with leaflets regarding the pets put down, but they also swamped us with leaflets about the Colorado beetle we should send any unusual beetle to the breeding station at Aberystwyth, Wales to be identified, they were absolutely swamped with boxes of Beetles.

Let’s go back to 1918, the German soldiers were not the well trained soldiers of 1914 but 15 year old, forced to fight, our Naval Blockade had coursed a starvation of the people, they were close to a revolution, so Brits decided to drop baskets of Colorado beetle on their potato crops, and finish them ‘off’ but they started their offensive, the one big try. So we canceled.

In the early twenties when the story broke and now recovered, they were seething, it helped Hitler to get started. The British Gov't fully expected them to start the war off with the Colorado beetle, when we were near starving from the U-Boat campaign.

Interesting, Blitzkid.

Can you point me to any sources to learn more about this? It's memories like these that are so interesting and engaging.

Blitzkid, I uncovered these two articles from The Times archive...


1938


1939

Dutchman I do appreciate your Photo's and stories, but if you mean that car in the crater, there were no woman in the car, the woman was six-months pregnant and persuaded someone to bring her husband home, the driver died but the husband lived, they felt guilty ever after.

We not only had the colorado beetles, we had foot and mouth disease, but with soldiers on maneuvers all over the country side it was ignored.

Also on that page was Coventry's attempt at a second attempt to evacuate kid's, after the fiasco of twelve months before.