大象传媒

My name is Barbara Waldrom. I was born June 18th.,1933 at Bond Street Maternity Home.

My mother and father moved from Victoria Road East to 149 Lancaster Street when I was six and my brother Trevor was four years of age.

I remember that our house had a bay window and with a small front garden and iron railings along the front of the garden. During the war the railings were taken 鈥� to be used for the 鈥� war effort鈥�. We learned that when they had taken tons and tons of these railings they didn鈥檛 know what to do with them and they were dumped somewhere.

I remember the very long evenings 鈥� we had double summer time so that the enemy would have less darkness during which to bomb us. It was light until 11.00 p.m for much of the summer school holiday period and we played out until that time. I had a very happy childhood and felt secure. However, my mother was very anxious with having young children. We had an Anderson air raid shelter in the back yard. There was a flower garden planted on the top of it to disguise it from the planes flying over, if it was still light. My mother, however would not use it, although it was quite good inside, because she did not consider it safe, being outdoors. We spend most nights under the stairs. If the siren sounded we then went to the community air raid shelter, on Green Lane Road. I remember my grandma Waldrom saying that she went to bed as usual every night. 鈥淚f they drop a bomb on you, My duck, they will get you under the stairs just as easily as in your bed.鈥�

In fact Leicester was considered a safe place and we had evacuees billeted here during the war for safety. We had children from London and two girls from Coventry lived next door to us.

I remember visiting my uncle in Tydd St. Giles in Lincolnshire where he worked on a farm. There were German prisoner of war working on this farm and we got with them very well.

Probably because of the many chimneys smoking we seemed to have a lot of fog. The windows of the houses were blacked out and we had to paint a white mark on the wall where the entry was so that we could see where to enter our house. So when it was foggy at night and everywhere was blacked out we really could not see at all.

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