大象传媒

I was 4 when the war began, but the first clear wartime recollection I had was in fact shortly before the start of hostilities when the Anderson Shelter kit arrived at our house in Knighton Church Road on the South Eastern edge of Leicester. I remember vividly the shininess of the corrugated steel and the almost crystalline pattern of its manufacture. My Mum and Dad had the job of erecting and bolting together the various integral parts after first digging a 3 foot deep hole which would contain the structure. My brother David, who was 7 at the time, and I lent a hand shovelling soil over the top of the completed shelter from the spoil heap that had been dug out to accommodate the building, in the naive belief that we were helping!

The early days of the war seemed to bring plenty of activity, and the interest in what was going on kept us both in and out of mischief. Being children, neither my brother nor I had any meaningful perception of what our parents were experiencing at this time. The blackout restrictions created a general flurry of activity in the neighbourhood with steps and curbs being painted white to assist in night-time safety, blackout curtains or panels of numerous designs and construction methods appeared in our homes, and vehicles sprouted cowls on their headlights with horizontal slits giving the minimum amount of illumination. Every sixth house along our road was allocated a stirrup pump and a bucket of sand with instructions on how to deal with incendiary bombs. For some reason or other we finished up with two stirrup pumps and 2 buckets and these remained with us for the rest of the war and well beyond. Advice was given in leaflet form how to prevent injury from shards of flying glass caused by bomb blast by treating windows with homemade anti-splinter material. This ranged from brown sticky tape criss-crossing the window in a union jack type format to quite sophisticated pieces of cotton netting being stuck to the window with a clear adhesive. In our house we did manage to acquire some cotton netting but this unfortunately was fitted with amber coloured glue which physically did the trick but did nothing to enhance its appearance or the amount of light we now received in the rooms. For some unknown reason none of our upstairs rooms were ever done and this gave us a clear view of the glow which resulted when bombing raids took place in Coventry and Birmingham. Although the two cities were 22 miles and 39 miles away respectively, we were able see the glow from the fires clearly. Looking from our bedroom window the glow from Coventry was on the left hand side of the tree outside our house and the glow from Birmingham on the right. Most of the terraced houses in this part of Knighton Church Road had various designed ornamental railings enclosing their front gardens with ornamental front gates. I recall one gloomy day when along came a group of men with a lorry and an acetylene torch and one-by-one ours and our neighbours railings were removed, together with the gates. People were sad to see these go, but did little complaining since it was said they were desperately needed so that the metal could be reused for the war effort. Sadly as it turned out, many of these stockpiles were, in fact, never used and rusted in local yards.

During the early part of the War, Dad kept a Map of South East England, Belgium and Northern France on the Wall in the downstairs front room. Similar to the illustration which appears in the introduction to the TV series 鈥淒ad鈥檚 Army鈥� Dad pinned to this map little flags showing either Union Jacks or Swastikas. I remember watching these Swastikas being moved closer to the French Coast, so I guess it must have been 1940. The map then mysteriously disappeared. Although I cannot positively recollect any particular fears during that period, I can only guess that our parents must have suspected that it was conceivable David and I could be picking up subconsciously the fears that they themselves had of the possibility of an impending invasion, a deliberation which must have been on every adult mind at that time. However, whenever the warning siren sounded during an evening we merely saw it as a time when we could alter our bed-time routine and then be given a piece of chocolate, a commodity which was rapidly becoming in short supply, as a reward for hurrying to the shelter. It must have been around this time that Dad received his calling up papers and off he went for his medical. It was a great shock to him and my mother that he failed his medical, being classified C3. What the reason was for his failure we never ever did find out, and since he appeared physically fit and was working long hours, prior to and subsequent to his medical, it will continue to be a mystery.

I started to school after Easter 1940 at St John the Baptist Infants in Clarendon Park. The school had to double up with Avenue Road Junior School to allow the Troops to occupy our own school building. I can recall having to carry our gas masks at all times. These masks were housed in tubular metal cases. 鈥楪as Mask Drill鈥� was a regular routine at school but the majority of children felt it was more amusing to force the rubber of the gas mask to make vulgar, and we thought amusing noises, by breathing out violently with the mask on ones face than taking the drill seriously. The metal cases were also frequently used by both the boys and the girls as implements, tools or weapons as circumstances dictated. Before very long the original pristine, black painted container, became a dented, distorted, and eventually rust spattered accessory. Looking back from the present time it must have been quite traumatic at that time for some of the young teachers who not only had responsibility for their young charges鈥� education and discipline but also for their lives should an attack take place during school hours. Most of the teachers were female, many of the male teachers having either volunteered for military service or been conscripted. The male teachers who remained were beyond conscription age and a number of semi-retired female teachers brought back into teaching, some reintroducing almost Dickensian methods of teaching. For a reason quite beyond comprehension for an area which was a probable bombing target, late 1940 brought in to this part of the city evacuees from London and the South East and this swelled our classes and school to bursting point. For a very short time there was an average of 90 children per teacher. When the evacuees arrived I do recall watching a number of officious women dressed in navy blue, a few were kindly looking but some appeared hostile and rodent like. They were combing the neighbourhood, clutching clipboards, instructing single people and couples without children or whose children had left home to take one or more these young hapless evacuees. One particular recollection of this was standing and watching a most aggressive and overbearing lady haranguing an elderly couple on their doorstep into accepting a child and, still being in an age where deference to officialdom was commonplace, this couple looking so distraught and bemused at what was going on. Even at my tender age I felt so sad for the evacuees, thinking how awful it must be for them, some of which were no older than me, to be away from their families and friends and living with complete strangers. At the same time I felt sorry for some of the elderly couples who seemed, even through the eyes of me as a young child, only just able to look after themselves let alone being able to look after young children who were away from all they knew and held dear. The situation concerning the evacuees did not remain static for long and after the first full raid on the City many of the evacuees went back home, presumably because their parents felt it was far better to be at home with their family and take the risk of being bombed out rather than being with strangers in a strange place that was also a target for attack.

Quite early into the war Dad had the notion that it might keep the active and inquisitive minds of David and I off more serious adult matters by regularly bringing us a publication called 鈥楾he Aeroplane Spotter鈥� for our bedtime reading along with 鈥橳he Dandy鈥�,鈥� Comic Cuts鈥� and鈥� Chips鈥�. Not many weeks passed by before we were conversant not only with the antics of 鈥楧esperate Dan鈥� and 鈥楰orky the Cat鈥� but with the profile and plans of German Dorniers Do17Z鈥檚, Junkers 87鈥檚 88鈥檚, Heinkel He111鈥檚, Messerschmitt Me109鈥檚, and British Spitfires, Hurricanes, and a host of other British Fighters and Bombers and looked forward to identifying any one of these if and when they arrived. We had no electricity supply in the house, only gas, with no lighting at all upstairs, except a torch and a 鈥榳ee willie winkie鈥� type candlestick and candle on the shelf of the bedroom fireplace. At least when we went to bed we didn鈥檛 have any problems with 鈥楶ut that Light Out鈥� from Wardens, when on a clear moonlit night we opened the curtains and explore the skies for enemy planes.

Ironically our main real fear on moonlit nights seem to come, not from the prospect of enemy planes coming to get us, but from the grotesque and seemingly threatening shapes which were shadowed onto the curtains by the moonlight shining through the boughs and leaves on the tree which stood outside the house. This gave free rein to our fertile imaginations of being threatened and peered at by malevolent ghouls, fiends and devils intent on, at best, scaring us but at worst doing us positive harm, The more we talked to each other about these spectres, the more we scared each other, but add an owl screech or hoot to the occasion and all the ingredients were there to convince us that we had very good reason to be scared!

Inevitably after two or three minor or lone raider attacks, albeit causing loss of life and property, a full raid on the City did take place. I recall on that November evening before the attack had really got under way, we heard a neighbour rushing around wailing 鈥� 鈥極ooh missus, Adolph鈥檚 here, we鈥檙e doomed we鈥檙e done for 鈥� oh what are we going to do missus?鈥� A rather outspoken but stoical next-door neighbour is heard shouting back much to our amusement; 鈥榳hat鈥檚 up wi鈥檡er Ginny 鈥� have a fag and shut yer rattle.鈥�

Leicester, unlike a number of other industrial cities, was fortunate only to have a handful of air raids during the war but during one rather vicious heavy raid on the City on 19th November 1940 (when 108 people were killed that night in the City itself and a lot of industrial and residential damage was done), I was outside on top of the shelter and giving my mother a particularly hard time by preferring to watch the German planes against the angry reddish glow in the sky over the City caused by the incendiary fires than go into our shelter. Eventually Dad became somewhat angry at my fractious behaviour and I was threatened with dire consequences if I didn鈥檛 obey him immediately and get inside rather than jump about on the top of the shelter. Eventually, under protest, I complied, or more precisely was physically made to comply. No sooner was I safely in the shelter with Mum Dad and Dave than the steel and wood door Dad had somehow knocked together was blown clean off by the blast of a nearby HE bomb or Aerial Landmine and was never seen by any of us again. Of course had it not been for the capricious nature of fate, the circumstances for me and the others could have been quite different.

About six hours into the raid in the early hours of the morning, all the families in the immediate area of South Knighton, were told by an ARP Warden, to make their way to a local ARP post on account of suspected unexploded bombs in the area. On the way to the ARP Post Dad was arrested by a Warden as a suspected looter of goods taken from blown out shop windows on South Knighton Road. He presumably suspected David as his junior accomplice, a sort of latter day Artful Dodger and my Mother as a 30鈥檚 type gangster鈥檚 Moll! The Wardens were no doubt disappointed to find that instead of the swag contained in the blanket slung over Dad鈥檚 shoulder proving to be the contents of Vokes鈥� sweet shop window and Starbuck鈥檚 Off Licence鈥檚 stock of brown ale, it merely contained me instead, half asleep! At 5.30am off went Dad on his bike to work as a Bakers Roundsman in the Highfields area of the City all before the 鈥榓ll clear鈥� had sounded. That night we overheard him telling my Mum that he went to one small street and all the houses apart from the one at the end had completely disappeared. Sadly the lady from the end house had gone next door to be with her neighbour and she had been one of the large numbers who had been killed in that area of the City, many of whom had been customers of his. The following day we were at school as usual, and the school bus, its windows blacked out with paint in the normal wartime fashion, had to negotiate round a few craters and gas mains afire around the Shirley Road/Elms Road junction, This encouraged the kids to scratch even more bits off the black window paint to peer out to see what was going on.

In the next few days following the raid of the 19th and another on the 20th many of the local children, David and I included, were out clambering over rubble in the Elms Road /Shirley Road area and the Knighton Road/Newstead Road area where quite a number of people had been killed and a 20鈥� girder from one of the destroyed houses was wrapped like a horse shoe round an opposite tree. We watched men searching amongst the bombed out buildings, and speculation was rife amongst the kids whenever items were moved as to whether or not they would turn out to be dead bodies. Serious discussions abounded as to whether or not ghosts of the people who had died would still be floating around or would the spirits go away as soon as the cadaver was found by the searchers. We all traipsed around to look at the damage caused in the immediate area, including also bomb damage in the Knighton Church Road, Carisbrooke Avenue area and in the vicinity of Allandale Road/Francis Street. It does seem bizarre looking back from 2005 that we, in common with virtually all the other children in the neighbourhood, were all allowed free rein to visit these areas unaccompanied, but as far as I know, nobody ever came to any harm or was traumatised by the sights.

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