大象传媒

On the night of Nov 14th, 1940, when the air-raid sirens sounded, we went down to the concrete air-raid shelter that my father had built in the back garden. It had four bunk beds and was ten feet below the ground. My father and older brother had built it in the summer of 1939 before the war had actually started. As the night went on, and we could hear the anti- aircraft guns placed on the edge of the City of Leicester, we heard my father, who was an A.R.P. warden, say "The children ought to see this." We put on overcoats and came up into the night. On the horizon to the South west, we could see a glow in the sky, and ack-ack shell bursts "Coventry is getting it ", said my father. "Thank goodness, Ray is not there." My brother had been in Coventry earlier in the year at the G.E.C. factory, but, though in a reserved occupation, he had volunteered for the RAF to use the radios he had been making. He was at Seletar aerodrome in Singapore. Well away from the war, we thought.
Next morning, we could actually smell burning as the wind carried the smoke over the 25 mile distance.
My brother was captured at Singapore in 1942, and unfortunately never returned to us. The family have visited the war memorial at Kranji, Singapore at different times and paid our respects to his memory and his service.
Although we are no longer the owners of the house in Leicester, we confirmed recently that the deep re-inforced concrete air-raid shelter still exists beneath the present garden, but there is no actual entrance anymore.

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