大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by J Clarke. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In late 1940 we spent every night in our back yard shelter, as the sirens sounded almost nightly when the bombers passed over Leicester on their way to Coventry.

On this particular night, we heard the bombs dropping in the distance, each one getting nearer, then there was an almighty crash which shook the whole of the shelter, followed by the sound of debris falling onto the roof. We were very alarmed, especially as my sister had gone into town to the cinema (it turned out she had been trying to run home but she had been stopped and directed to the nearest shelter). I really thought that the roof of our shelter would collapse.

After the noise ceased we waited in the shelter as my Father insisted that this was the safest thing to do. Some time later an Air Raid Warden shouted, 鈥淎re you alright in there 鈥� stay where you are鈥�. It turned out that he had walked along our street and found the front of our house damaged and the door completely missing, so he walked right through and out the kitchen door to find us.

Ours was the last of a long string of bombs.

After a considerable length he came back to tell us it was safe to leave the shelter. We went out into the yard, through the house and out into the street where we found that the local Off Licence/Grocery Shop had taken the full force of the blast, knocking the front of the building outwards and into our street.

The owner of the shop was accustomed to going into her beer cellar whenever there was a raid, so my parents were concerned for her safety and informed the Warden of her custom. Fortunately, on that occasion, a friend had insisted that she went to share their shelter.

Next day everyone went out to inspect the whole of the damage and to our amazement, on looking up, we found the Shopkeeper鈥檚 armchair perched on our roof.

My sister and I inspected our bedroom to find it in reasonable condition except the complete window was out. Our bed was covered in shards of glass and the counterpane and bedding was in shreds. Thank goodness we were not sleeping in that bed!

We youngsters had a great time picking up the tins of food which had been blown out of the grocery section and which had lost their labels. We took our 鈥渟poils鈥� into our cellar (Mother went mad thinking that we were going to get her arrested for looting!) for weeks afterwards we had fun trying to guess the contents.

We didn鈥檛 move out of our home 鈥� we continued to live in it, sleeping in the shelter each night. Eventually the builders shored it up, and then repaired it.

Miraculously, no-one in our street was injured.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.