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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Anna Wilson of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Jack Herbert and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was 25 when war broke out and lived in Lutterworth.

I was in the Home Guard. I remember that it was just like it is in the television programme ‘Dad’s Army’. We didn’t have a uniform from the time it started until the end. We were given a tin helmet and a gun though.

I remember once when I was out walking with a girl I was courting, we came across some soldiers with bayonets. This was near where the Red Arrow pub is now. They said to us’ what are you doing?’ and gave us a bit of a scare.

Lutterworth had quite a lot of evacuees. My mother-in-law had one in her home. Most of them were Roman Catholic so didn’t cause too much trouble! I remember that the Mother Superior was not very happy as the evacuee used to go to my mother-in-law’s Anglican church. She thought that she was taking him away from the Catholic church.

I remember the air raids. We used to keep working through them at BTH but they did black out the workshop windows. I could see Coventry being bombed on my way to work. You could see the bullets raining down. I was called up for the army and was about to go. I told my boss that I wouldn’t be in to work the next week but he wouldn’t hear about it. He told me to ignore the letter and eventually got me out of it by saying that I was a ‘constructional plater’, a job that was reserved work. Unfortunately I didn’t get the pay of one of these though!

I remember the Americans driving through Lutterworth throwing chocolates, gum and other scarce items for people in the street.

Food
I think that our diet was a lot more wholesome than today. We didn’t go hungry as we had two allotments, found mushrooms from the field, went blackberrying in Woodmarket and used to catch rabbits from over the fields.

Toys n’ Games
I was a too old for toys and games but many of them were similar to those I used to play when younger. We made our own games from our imagination. I remember ‘lurky’ where you hid and someone had to find you – then you had to try to beat them to the lamp post before they did! There were also pranks we used to pull like ‘pin and button’. This involved putting a pin with a button attached to it in the putty of a window and then the wind used to blow the button against the window. It really annoyed people! We also played rounders but you hit the ball with your fist and it was played it the streets with lampposts as bases. There wasn’t so much traffic about then.

The Silent Noise
I was working at BTH in Rugby when the testing for the jet engine was being carried out. I was involved in making steel rings and only found out later that these were part of the jet engine. I remember that we found out later that they could start the engine but then didn’t know what to do to stop the thing. They blew up the testing shed in Rugby so the operation had to be moved to Lutterworth. We didn’t know anything about this at the time but got to learn about it later through talk in the Working Men’s Club and around the town.

VE Day Celebrations
I remember Feast Week of 1945. A group of us dressed in funny costumes on one of the floats. One was May West, another a debutante, one Grandad and others school boys. We had a fair down Station Road and a band. The village cricket match was played in this week.

Lutterworth was never the same again after the war. People didn’t return and others went to live elsewhere.

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