Lesley reminded me today about her aunt Violet after she read a post on facebook at the weekend about the Coventry blitz in WW2.
Violet was the third of 6 children born to Lesley's grandparents, John and Annie HOWARD on 2nd Nov 1918, just 9 days before the Armistice was signed, ending WW1 hostilities.
HOWARD Family Group - about 1924
In this photo Violet is pictured far right with her two older siblings May and John and her two younger siblings Charles and Ronald. As we currently believe baby Ronald was born about 1924, this would be the approximate year of the photo.
HOWARD Family Group - abt. 1930
This family group shot was taken around 1930 and shows 4 of the 6 children with Violet on the left.
Violet Howard
(The first of only two further photos we have of Violet – all probably late 1930's)
Violet pictured here by a church
Family Headstone with Violet, her mother and older brother
(We only know she married a GRENSIL [there are multiple spellings published for this surname] from the inscription on her headstone - no firm marriage date yet. And the headstone suggests she died in 1941.)
In fact sadly, Violet was killed by a WW2 bomb at the young age of 22. We were told this by Lesley's late parents. They said she would ignore good advice to avoid areas down town during the bombing raids and she was buried under rubble during an attack.
We didn't know a great deal else until Lesley did a Google search and discovered one or more excellent websites all about the Blitz in Coventry. The above clip is an extract from one such site and seems to confirm that poor Violet was a victim of the November 1940 bombing, losing her short life in the Foleshill Road , Coventry
Another website, this one referring to books you can obtain about the period and author ‘Trevor Harkin’ also refers to the stories of the victims by name, including our Violet.More updates when we get the details.
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