大象传媒

I can recall a time at the beginning of the war when, in the middle of the night my mother grabbed me from a deep sleep in my bed, frantically wrapped me in a blanket, hurried down the stairs and into the back yard, climbed about nine stone steps up to the garden level and ran towards the 鈥楢nson shelter鈥� but in her haste, collided with the neighbours fence causing my Mother to accidentally drop me on the other side. In the pitch black darkness there was a big scramble to get me back as quickly as possible and in to the protective but gloomy dank smelly shelter until an 鈥淎ll Clear鈥� was sounded. My father always remained outside and kept watch.
Then there was the time we went to the brick community air raid shelter in Wellinger Way, Braunstone, but after my mother discovered that another child there had Whooping cough, we never went to that community shelter ever again.
Another incident regarding going to an air raid shelter was when my Mother and I were near to the town hall square one afternoon when the air raid siren at the top of Lewis鈥檚 Tower sounded and my Mother grabbed my hand and we made a dash for the large brick shelter on the site where the war memorial now is. It was the only time we ever got caught out in town and where I could never understand why where large piles of sand bags were built-up in front of the plate glass windows of such shops as Lewis鈥檚 and the Bell Hotel. Other shop windows had sticking plaster criss-crossed all over them to stop them shattering all over the place should a bomb explode nearby.

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