´óÏó´«Ã½

March 2004

Nidhi, Bhavika and Charmi spoke to Mr and Mrs Parker of Belgrave, in Leicester, who are aged 74.
These are some of their memories of the war.It has been added to the website with their permission. They understand the Website's Terms and Conditions.

Mrs Parker lived on Marfitt Street and went to Mellor Street School during the war. School opened at 8.30am and there were 45 people in a classroom per class. She also remembers that they used to go potato picking from school.
She had a gas mask with another mask around it, to filter out mustard gas.
Her dad was a fireman, and skips 6ft high were full of water to put out bombs and fires .Her granddad had a greengrocer’s shop, and she remembers that onions were in short supply. All available ground was used for growing food, and her granddad also kept a pig.
They had an evacuee from Coventry called Joyce Fielding who died from a Rheumatic fever.

They had to carry identity cards whenever they left the house.

Mr Parker lived on Tudor Road and remembers air raid precautions from the age of 10. His dad worked on a railway, and his mum made parachutes, they worked at long tables from 8 in the morning until 6 at night. Went to dances in the evening and the girls did their hair with a shampoo called Twink —(it was really pongy!) and they curled their hair with sugar.
.
Air raid sirens made wailing sounds at the beginning of the air raid, and when the air raid finished the sound was of one long tone. The Radar informed us that the Germans were coming.
German bombers droned overhead and when the noise stopped, the bombs fell and you could see the flashes. A warehouse on the railway was bombed.

There was a big air raid shelter near Rushey Mead Secondary School. The streets were dark and the shelters were scary; you had to crawl through them. Shelters were sealed with dead people in them after a bad raid.
There were not many cars during the war, it was mostly pushbikes. Streetlights were also out and windows had sticky tape on them for the blackout.

Rationing — 1 egg, 2 ounces of cheese, sugar, butter, 2 lamb chops and 3 slices of meat for each person each week, and not a lot of bread.
For supper you would have dried eggs and spam and 2 teaspoons of potato.
There were coal shortages too.
You would get a certain number of tokens for clothes
Girls would paint their legs with gravy to make them look like stockings

They played games in their free time, and went to dances on the park, because there was no television, and they listened to the radio. They listened to Victor Sylvester, and to ITMA, as well as to plays. They remember playing snakes and ladders, and table tennis
Mrs Parker went to a youth club on Belper Street for 6d.
A German man called Lord Haw Haw scared people on the radio.
King George 6th came on the radio as well as the Queen Mum to reassure people that everything was going to be okay.

If you got married during the war, you had a big cake made out of cardboard which was fake and, underneath it was a fruitcake, which was the real wedding cake.

They lost no one in the war, but they did have one cousin who escaped from Poland called John.

They had street parties when the war ended, they made bonfires, and had a few beers. After the war ships came to London with bananas from the Caribbean.

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