大象传媒

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

I was Rachael Wright and my father and mother and myself lived on a small farm at Huncote just seven miles from Leicester. As a 10 year old I remember at night the droning of the Lancaster bombers passing over us on the way to Germany to bomb their cities. Hundreds went over. On the night the Germans came over and bombed Coventry we could see the sky lit up and the noise was terrible throughout the night.

Leicester - I was staying in the centre of the city with my aunt and uncle at their butchers shop in Humberstone Gate. Leicester was bombed and Freeman, Hardy and Willis a large shoe factory on the corner of Humberstone Gate took a direct hit and was on fire. We could see the terrible fire and hear the fire engines. We were some of the time in my uncle's Anderson Shelter in the garden and under the sand bags. A terrible night which is still in my memory.

Back at home on the farm - We had an exhausted pigeon which dropped in for a rest. We caught it and it had stamped on its wing feathers "War Ministry" and a message afixed to its leg. We called the police and a policeman and a soldier came and collected it. We did wonder how important it might have been.

Evacuees - We had a small number from the East end of London. We found them difficult to understand being Cockneys. I went to school with them and we got on very well.

Gas Masks - We were issued with gas masks in a square cardboard box. We either made covers for them in whatever material we could get or bought covers to make the boxes last longer. A big mobile van came to the village of Huncote and we had to wear our masks and go in one door and pass through the vehicle and come out the far door to see if our masks were gas proof. An amount of some gas was circulating in the vehicle. Mine was fine.

Silver Foil - Strips of silver foil just under 25cms long were dropped by our aircraft in quite large quantities as an experiment to see if it upset our radar. I think it was to see if on our bombing raids in Germany if we could at the same time drop the foil to help stop the German radar tracking our planes and then shooting them down.

I went around our fields and hedges picking it up. Those pieces caught in the trees stayed there until they blew out. They only dropped the foil on one occasion and I well remember it.

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