大象传媒

When the war started I was attending the Wyggeston Grammar school for Girls. Our headmister was Miss Caress and she was very forward looking and had arranged to have air-raid shelters prepared in the grounds, so when the war came, because the Collegiate School and the Newark Girls School did not have the necessary shelters we had to share our school with them. This meant that one week we went in the mornings from 8.00am to 12.00pm and the next week we would go after lunch from 1.00pm to 5.00pm. This did rather upset feeding arrangements at home but we managed. Later on several of the senior girls went potato picking to help the farmers, and at one stage we had a packing station in one of the gyms, where would be packed up small parts of some sort of machinary. I never did find out what it was we were dealing with but we were told it was all part of the war effort.
The Air Raid Wardens used to patrol the streets at night to make sure the black out was secure and knock up any one who was showing a light. Our house on Ashleigh Road backed on to the Upperton Road houses and one of these had poor blackout so one night the wardens, escorted by my father climbed over a six foot wall at the bottom of our garden to call on the house involved. They had to do it that way as they couldn't tell which house it was was from the front of Upperton Road.

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Sara-Jane Higginbottom of the Leicester CSV Action Desk on behalf of Drusilla Armitage and has been added to this site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

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