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These memories were submitted to the People’s War Website by a volunteer from Derby CSV Action Desk on behalf of Mrs E Garmley and have been added with her permission. Mrs Garmley fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

There were lots of raids in Derby because of Rolls-Royce and the Railway and the sirens sounded pretty well every night. We used to have bets in the office on what time the warnings would sound. One bomb landed in Regent Street between Rolls-Royce and the Infirmary and they had to evacuate as many patients as they could.
One raid in particular I can well remember. I was at my mother-in-law-to-be’s house pressing a dress I was making when the siren went off. We went in the shelter until the all clear sounded which was at 3am. When we went back into the house the iron was still on and it was white-hot; if it had fallen over it would have started a fire.
I went Ambleside for a holiday with my fiancé, separate rooms of course in those days, and there they used to ride up and down the streets blowing a whistle if there was warning. One night he knocked on my door, ‘You’d better get dressed, I’ve just heard the whistle’. We waited hours before we realised the whistle we’d heard was the all clear, we’d both slept through the warning.

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