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I remember bombers going over on the way to bomb Coventry which was a prime target and regularly saw the glow of the fires in the sky caused by the bombing of Coventry. The nearest bomb we saw here in Thornton was a land mine floating down on a parachute which landed on the Free Church in Kirby Muxloe which was completely destroyed.
I also remember iron railings in the area being taken for the war effort.
Over the school door there was a First World War Memorial and one morning myself and another pupil were asked to climb a ladder and press green plastacine over the word Thornton so that if any German landed in the area they wouldn’t know where they were.

Food was of course rationed but being a mining village extra ration coupons were issued for cheese for the miners who worked long shifts underground.
Many cottages in the village had a pig sty at the bottom of the garden and pigs were raised on food scraps, when the pigs were large enough to be killed this would be done in people’s back yards on what was known as a ‘scratch’ — a wooden stretcher like object on short legs.
The pig would then be butchered invariably in the wash house and on entering kitchens it would be quite normal to see two sides of bacon hanging on the wall and two huge hams hanging from the roof beams and if you had visitors you changed the pillow case covering the hams so that it looked clean.

As a school boy I moved on to South Charnwood School and I found there the boys had at least five periods of gardening a week, all the food needed for school dinners with the exception of meat was produced on the school site and a large store room within the school contained vegetables for use during the winter time.

One evening when the factory workers bus was returning to the village a parachutist was seen coming down beyond the reservoir. This was assumed to be a German landing. The local defence volunteer course (later became the Home Guard) which was basically all the men in the village, started training with broom handles in the early stages of the war and I remember before rifles were available broom handles were used for bayonet practise in the allotment hedge. When rifles and real bullets were issued there was some apprehension amongst villagers. Harry was the smallest member of the company but was made Corporal and it was on him that the call was made when the parachutist was seen landing and he sprang into action with half his face shaved and the other half still lathered. He raced out with his rifle across his bicycle handle bars but by the time he located the airman the so called German was cornered in a local farm yard by the farmer with his shot gun. So before Harry arrived with is gun the airman was lucky to get away with his life, then it was spotted the petrified prisoner had ‘Poland’ on his shoulder flash and it turned out that he was a volunteer airman on a training flight from RAF Desford. Desford Airfield now the site of ‘Caterpillar’ became an airforce training aerodrome towards the end of the war and it was not unusual to see twelve or fourteen Tiger Moths in the sky as we walked to school.

'This story was told to and submitted to the People's War Website by Dave Bielby of CSV Action Desk Leicester on behalf of John Smith and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.`

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