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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Margaret Woolley. She fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in 1935 so would have been four years old when the war began. My first memory was my parents standing in our back yard watching formations of planes flying over. They could remember the first World War and this caused a lot of tension in the home. I quite clearly remember the night a line of bombs was dropped parallel to the village; the last bomb landed at the bottom of Peatling Road near the brook. At the time, we lived at the top end of the road; I was about five years old. My sister and I regularly had a bed under the heavy, scrub-topped kitchen table. On that particular night mum wrapped us up in blankets and took us into the cellar. There was a small metal grid on the outside wall of the cellar that opened on to the small two-foot wide garden adjoining the road. I remember hearing running footsteps that I was sure meant the Germans were coming to get us, and being absolutely terrified. Only later did we learn that it was the Home Guard and A.R.P. going to see if anyone lower down the Peatling Road was hurt.

My father was in the Home Guard. The Countesthorpe base was in the building which not houses Alice Graphics. They had camp beds upstairs and a pot-bellied coke stove on the ground floor for heating. Most of the members were too old to join the forces for the second world-war, but there were also younger farm workers exempt from war duties as they were expected to help feed the population. Many of the uniforms were ill-fitting and most men were issued with wooden 鈥済uns鈥�. They had a rota for night watches.

The village siren was on the roof of the King William pub and the one and only fire engine was based in the shed belonging to Dr. Wynn Barnley. This building faces onto the Square between the Tudor House and the Health Centre. The engine was manned by the A.R.P. (Air Raid Patrol), 鈥渁lways in competition with the Home Guard鈥�.

A number of funny stories have been handed down over the years. The Beeches farmhouse in Green Lane was always reputed to be haunted and during the war a very old lady called Annie Lowe lived there alone. One night whilst on blackout duty, my father saw a light flickering through a downstairs window and he approached the house peering through the window for the light he had seen. Suddenly, looking out at him, there was old Annie dressed in a long white nightie plus night-cap with a candle in her hand. My father thought it was the ghost and made a hasty retreat!

On another occasion, the night watchman saw, from the upstairs window of the base, what he thought was a farm fire somewhere beyond the railway-bridge. At that time there were no houses where the Leicester Road estate now stands, just open fields. The alarm was raised and a platoon set off up the farm track to tackle the fire. As they approached the bridge they realized it was the full moon shining behind a leafless copse. They never lived down the night they tried to put out the moon!

The local villages practised combat and manoeuvres against each other. One such event was between Countesthorpe and Wigston Magna, with Foston Road one of the main areas of approach to be defended. Our men set off in pairs across the fields towards the canal and came up against two men from Wigston of whom one had a severe speech impediment. Our lads arrested him, honestly believing they had captured a German soldier.

Several nights each week a number of the men would meet at our house and dad would teach them to send Morse Code messages (dots and dashes representing letters of the alphabet). The machine to my memory was like a stapler, about 8 inches long with a shiny round knob that was depressed and lifted by hand in order to transmit the signal. I went to sleep to the clack-clack sound it made.

My father also ran the Allotment Society. They had a store in an old framework knitters鈥� building. It was situated behind a row of four or five 鈥渢wo up two down鈥� terraced houses between the Co-op and the Conservative Club.

School was regularly interrupted with air-raid drills. We had to practise going into the shelter on the playground, and were frequently told to put on our gas-masks.

We had, what I considered to be, very strange people come to stay with us; they were evacuees from London who talked differently from us. The children hadn鈥檛 ever seen farm animals before, or eaten vegetables fresh from the garden. There was a mother with two or three children but they did not stop with us for long. Our neighbours had a married couple with one daughter. The daughter and I became close friends. The family settled in the village and we are still friends today. The mother worked for the Co-op and used to cycle all over the village delivering grocery orders at weekends. There were always a few rationed things that families could have one of each week.

My brother was in the R.A.F. and when he came home from his training in Canada he brought his kit bag full of presents for the family. There was a soft real leather handbag for my mother of which she was very proud and some dress fabric for me and my middle sister along with buttons, zips and cotton all to match. Mum鈥檚 friend made up the dresses and we thought we were the best-dressed family in the village! I thought the best treat was a huge tin of wine gums as sweets were rationed. Unfortunately my beloved brother was killed whilst training other young pilots to fly; the grief my parents suffered was with them until they died. Mum was making his 21st birthday cake when the telegram arrived. Our elder sister told us two younger girls when we got home from school. I remember it well 鈥� the fact that we wouldn鈥檛 see him again EVER. I still become emotional even now whilst writing this. To think this happened so needlessly in millions of British and German homes, as well as in all the other countries involved in this war.

I can鈥檛 remember whether it was during or after the war, but on one occasion each young child took two old pennies to school and then all the children went 鈥渃rocodile fashion鈥� round to the Co-op and bought one orange and one banana each. We hadn鈥檛 seen either of these fruits before.

My mother used to go around the village 鈥減utting the pig away鈥�. I went with her and can remember all she did, but that鈥檚 another story.

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