´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Wilfred Findley. He fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

On a bright sunny day, just after dinner, I remember standing in our back yard watching an escaped barrage balloon drift across the blue sky. This balloon was being pursued by a fighter aircraft trying to shoot it down. Everywhere was so quiet you could hear the aircraft’s guns being fired. The whole show drifted out of sight.

An air raid siren sounded during the late evening. This was the signal for my parents to gather together all the cushions from our ‘easy’ chairs and lay them down on the living room floor, to provide a mattress for sleeping downstairs.

I have memories of leaning on our front gate during early evening, watching what seemed like squadrons of airmen cycling by on their way from Bruntingthorpe to either Wigston or Leicester for a night out; looking up into the sky at various times during the day and early evening for two weeks one summer, to see squadrons of gliders being towed southwards during the day and northwards during the evening. I recall standing in our back garden as twilight fell listening to the blackbirds and thrushes singing away like mad, then hearing the loud rumble of aircraft approaching and as the noise got to its loudest, seeing wave after wave of bombers on their way to Germany. Not really being involved, but hearing of the Italian prisoners clearing out and fencing the brook, then seeing what a fine job they had done when it was finished.

Another time, for three days, some German prisoners were repairing roads in the village and having their dinner break in the paddock belonging to Mr Reed, opposite the Police House, on Station Road. During our dinner break, we went to see them and ended up sharing their sandwiches, then kicking a ball around with them. (Soccer international!).

Over a weekend a group of local residents dug out a hole and constructed an air raid shelter at the bottom of next door’s garden. This shelter regularly filled up with water and so was rarely able used except as an exercise for the village fire pump. This was stored in a garage on the Square and was wheeled out by six men to where it was needed. It was well used pumping out our shelter.

One day going into Butts Close we found that trenches had been dug across the field, ready to stop gliders landing, but providing an excellent adventure playground for us all. With no lights allowed to be shown, corners of walls and edges of steps had white patches painted on them to aid visibility during the dark hours.

The father of one of my friends was serving in the Fire Service somewhere on the South Coast. On one of his weekend leaves he gave me a small battered piece of steel, which I was told, was a piece from a ‘Doodle Bug’ or Flying Bomb. This is now probably rusting away in my garage.

For a lot of the time during the war Glazebrook’s factory was used as a store for Magnesium Ingots. The delivery and removal of these stocks resulted in lots of wafer thin pieces of this metal lying around outside the building. It wasn’t long before we found out how flammable these pieces were and what super bright light was emitted when they were burnt.

My father’s cousin came home on leave one day and when he came to visit us, gave me an Army knife, which had a blade, a can opener, a screwdriver and a marlin spike, together with a loop for hanging on a belt clip. This was my most precious possession for months.

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