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This story was submitted to the people’s War site by Holly Fuller of Leicestershire Library Services on behalf of Ray Lander and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.
I lived in Leicester during the war just off Saffron Lane, 84 Landsdowne Road. I can remember being in our back garden watching the pigeons feeding and then hearing aeroplane engines. There was low cloud and you kept seeing that aeroplanes going in and out the clouds. You could hear a whirring sound and then suddenly bombs started falling. Lots landed on Cavendish road, blowing the tops of houses and shops including the butchers shop, he cobblers and the chemist. The church escaped damage. I was only 11 or 12 and I can remember my Dad shouting ‘Get down’. Five or ten minutes later that siren starred and an hour later we got the all clear, we then went to try and investigate and see the damage. You could see a bed hanging out of an upstairs window, an Anderson shelter was flattened and another had a bomb crater about 2 feet from it.

There were only 2 or 3 nights of bombing in Leicester. We had an Anderson shelter in our garden. I can remember one night in the shelter, t was pouring with rain , my father had put duck board on the floor on the shelter to make it more comfortable and in the morning it was floating because there had been so much rain.

Near where I lived the agricultural showground and a rubbish tip behind which is now the Alyestone Leisure Centre and customer car park was used as a store for army lorries and tanks, there were 100s, they were kept bumper to bumper. ON d- day you could see 1000s of aeroplanes from daylight to dusk flying over to France. A few days later all the tarmac was churned up down Saffron Lane and the tanks were all gone- probably off to France.

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