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GWEN SPENCER
LEICESTER

I WAS 6 YEARS OLD WHEN WAR BROKE OUT

I remember my Dad was in the Home Guard, he also worked full time at the Gas Works at Aylestone. This was a dangerous place. It is amazing how the Germans missed hitting the target gas works, I put it down to the fact that my Dad was working there.
My dad‘s photograph is in the Gas Museum at Aylestone, kitted out in his Home Guard uniform. The buttons on my dad’s uniform were polished by me every Sunday morning.
I also remember the Bomb run on Cavendish Road; they must have been trying to hit the Gas works or Lockheed.

We had a little Anderson Shelter at the bottom of the garden, and we used to enter this when the sirens went off. I can remember it being damp and cold. One night we had a bomb drop on Braunstone Park. We got stuck inside the shelter all soil and stuff had piled up in front of the entrance. We were scared and thought we were all being buried alive.

We had to wait for Dad to come home from work to dig us out. We probably would have had to claw our way out otherwise.
Dad was on Firewatch duties as well as Home guard and Gas Works. The procedure if there was a fire was to strike a stick onto the metal dustbin lid, that was at our front gate, which was at the bottom of the Cul-De-Sac where we lived ( dead end street).

One evening when my Dad came home from work he accidentally kicked the dustbin, ( not the bucket, a sense of humour remark for dying). All the neighbours came rushing out, stood in the street and my Dad was so Red Faced through embarrassment.

Other times when my Granddad was teaching us Tap-dancing, to take our minds off the troubles. One night we did not go down the shelter, because the noise we made Tap-Dancing on the wooden boards drowned out the sounds of the Airplane and even the siren. Must have been so captivated by our Granddad.
We grew all our own stuff in the garden and even had chickens, so we had fresh eggs and generally, even through rationing, we had sufficient to eat, fortunately!

We were all made aware of the short supply of everything, so we practiced ‘Waste Not Want Not’. A phrase made famous by an American President.

I remember evacuees coming to school and them talking peculiarly. I really felt this culture shock. On Braunstone Park they grew crops during the war mainly cereals, we used to go Gleaning ( collecting bits and pieces of corn and straw that the tractor had left behind ) then used these morsels to feed and bed the chickens. Everything was valued even scraps.

We had an evacuee after the bombing at Coventry, I think a long lost cousin, a big family all squashed into one, inside a council house.
When they decided to stop growing crops on Braunstone Park, American Troops were based on the park. Now this is where we first encountered a Black African or coloured American Soldier. Although they were all very friendly we got on with them well, the well known saying of this time ‘ Have you got any gum chum’? We were told to keep away, but we could not resist the happy smiling friendly faces.

My mum always made our clothes for us and we seemed to be always well dressed.
We used to cycle and Mum took us to our cousins at Hungerton, Scraptoft Way and we had to pass a POW camp and these were Italian Prisoners. My Mum told us not to look at them and pedal as fast as possible past them. We often wondered why they were so different as to not to be able to gaze at them.
We had a car that was kept as a treasure, because we did not have enough petrol, then after the war my Dad took us on a celebration trip on the saved gallon of petrol.
A little Ford Eight FJ 5319.

This story was submitted to the “Peoples War Site by Rod Aldwinckle of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of Gwen Spencer and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the terms and conditions of the site

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