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I recall very clearly that my Aunt and cousin came to us from London, and London at that time was receiving an awful lot of bombing so they came to Leicester to get a break. They came to our house, as fortunately Leicester where we lived there was very little bombing, but on this particular occasion we had the sirens go.

We had a cellar, and my Aunt, Cousin and the rest of us went down in to this cellar underneath the stairs. I remember they were absolutely shaking with terror as the planes went over. They actually dropped some bombs in the next street (King Street) — ‘Wilson’s’ the Printers got bombed that day. Our house shook and it actually broke some of the windows, even though we had tape over them.

I’ll never forget how terrified they were, because they thought they were safe at our house — we believe the planes were looking for Coventry, but were on their way back and so had to jettison the bombs before they went home.

Otherwise we were very fortunate in Leicester; we didn’t have much bombing at all.
This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Becky Barugh of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Sheila Cooper and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

See more of Sheila's stories:

• We gradually began to realise
• The quest for beer

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