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My 1st real recollection of the 2nd World War happened at about 1942. I was 10’yrs old at the time. I remember the sirens going off at all hr’s of the day and night. In the street outside our house was the air-raid shelter. It stood about 12ft high, with a thick concrete roof, this roof was about 3ft thick. The person in charge was the local air-raid warden, who was an oldish bloke, whose name was Dicko. He was the person responsible for opening the shelter door when the sirens sounded. He was also the person responsible for showing all the grown ups how to use a stirrup pump, and where the buckets of sand were kept, not forgetting important things like the blackout curtains, gas masks, and other safeguards, to help keep us safe.

The area where we lived was in what is known now as Highfields. It was a lot different in l942, to what it is now. It consisted of 2 up 2 down, roomed houses, and single roomed shops, where the front room was the shop, and the rest of the house was the living quarters on the ground floor, and upstairs, were the bedrooms (2). The ordinary houses formed a square at the back. Where there were small gardens and the kitchens. The kitchens were not attached to the main house, but were across the passageway. The toilets were down the yard, there were 2 toilets between four houses. Each tenant took in turn to clean the toilet; I usually got the job on Saturday morning. Night time was a real problem, this is where the term, “Gusunder” came from. I will leave it to the readers imagination, where the “Gusunder” went under. I lived in East Goscote Street, at one end of the street was Gartree St., where there was a newsagents, owned and managed, by a bloke name Smiggy. At the other end of the street was a street called, Upper Conduit Street. We were about half way down. The air raid shelter was right in front of our house, which was a good job the way things turned out.

It was about this time that the war was brought home to me in no uncertain terms. There had been rumours for about a week that we were to have some evacuees, whatever they were. Low and behold, we woke up one morning and there they were. Talk about a tattered lot, they were children of all ages and sizes, clutching their gas masks, in little brown boxes, dressed in non-descript clothes, carrying all of their belongings in brown paper parcels, and looking totally scared to death. There were a few grown ups with them, and they looked about as good. Tired and worn out. They were quite quickly allocated to different families around the district. We didn’t have any, because we only had two bedrooms, one for my mum and my five year old sister, and one for me. My dad was away fighting Hitler. Hitler was at it turned out, trying to kill us, and he dam near succeeded a couple of times. My mum worked in a boot and shoe factory making army boots. He working hours were long so I was in charge of my sister, from 7.30 a.m. until 6.30 at night.

The evacuees were quickly absorbed into our little enclave. They were from a place called London. They had terrible tales to tell. Their houses had been bombed and many of their families killed. Their mums and dads, didn’t know where they were. They were in charge of grown ups from their own districts. Rationing was at its height and everything was in short supply. But we managed to share what bits of food that we had, but were they grateful. Were they hell!

The evacuees were no different from us. They were always moaning. “They wanted to go back home”. “They could buy this in London, they could buy that in London”. “Rationing was at its height, but they were never satisfied”. All of the shop keepers including Smiggy were heartily sick of them demanding goods, that he hadn’t had in stock for ages. Things like, fags, chocolate, and sweets, but things were about to change.

The Yanks arrived. They came sweeping in with their trucks and Lorries and with Yanks came things that we hadn’t seen for ages. Things like candy chewing gum and powdered coffee, I had never seen this substance before. The things that we really liked were something called K Rations. These were subsistence packs, and consisted of powdered coffee, candy, dried milk, dehydrated vegetable soup, and the best of all chocolate. We hadn’t seen any chocolate for ages. Here were the Yanks giving it away. Some of the Yanks were blacks. They were the very first coloured men I have ever seen. If my memory serves me correctly, there was no love lost between the coloured Yanks and the white Yanks, and there were frequent altercations between them, mainly outside of the pub on the main road corner. The two colours just didn’t mix. You never saw them walking or chatting together which was a pity really because both sets were quite friendly towards us kids. “GOT ANY GUM CHUM”? Soon became our war cry. They were very generous but they generally asked “have you got a sister”? I had but she was only 5 years old, at that they generally lost interest. In my little sister I found out.

We were all in bed one night when the air raid sirens sounded. We gathered what bits we thought we might need. Not forgetting our gas masks. We tumbled down the stairs out of the front door into the shelter. Dicko had the door open and counted us all in.

This was a night to remember! We all had our own places in the shelter, mum my small sister and me were at the far end away from the door. We were in semi darkness, the only lights that we had were hurricane lamps and they didn’t give out much light, and they cast shadows in dark corners. The grown ups were trying to keep cheerful in the face of us kids. “It’s probably just a false alarm like all the others”. “They were saying”. But this was no false alarm, we heard the bombers go over and the crump, crump, crump of the bombs close by. The next thing all of the lanterns went out. We were in total darkness. We clumg to each other and as each crump went off we held each other until I thought that I would be crushed to death. I was terrified, and so was everybody else. Eventually Dicko managed to light the lamps again, and some kind of sanity returned to the shelter. The grown ups were trying to reassure each other that all was okay outside. But this was fear talking. You could see from their faces, that even they didn’t believe it.

Eventually I went to sleep and when I awoke the doors were opened and all of the grown ups went outside, followed by us kids. The smell as the doors were opened, wafted in, the smell of smoke, the smell of burning, these smells have never left me, even now, Idread bonfire night, and the smell stirs these long lost memories. I looked around and one side of Gartree street was gone. What was left of it was burning, it was like looking at my sister’s dolls house. The fronts of the remaining houses has collapsed and you could see right inside of the rooms, what furniture that there was. Was hanging down the front of the houses, and burning. The scene has never left me. It is imprinted on my memory. The army fire engines were attempting to quell the flames, but there was no water. The Yanks black and white were all trying to get into the houses to see if there was anybody left in there. Eventually things calmed down, and Dicko and the air raid wardens went round with their lists to see if anyone was missing. The amazing part of this was that our street was in tact. And our house was untouched, thank God. We were not allowed back because all of the houses had got to be checked for gas leaks. There was no electricity connected up to our houses, that was years away.

We were all carted off to Hill Crest, (Moat Community College now) but in those days it was the work house, and the mental hospital for old people. We didn’t have far to go, it was just at the end of our street. We were given something to eat, dried egg sandwiches, I can remember the brown wax boxes sitting on the shelves. We were checked over and allowed back to our houses, after they had been checked for damage, we were very fortunate, many of our neighbours opposite had lost everything. All of our possessions such as we had were in tact. After a couple of days we were allowed back into our little house and apart from a couple of nights spent in the shelter, such as it was returned to normal.

We kids had a good time playing in the ruins of the bombed out houses. And were warned repeatedly that it was dangerous. But kids being kids, would not be told, and sure enough a wall collapsed and a boy was hurt. After that the houses were boarded up and we all returned to school.

We went to school half day only, there was not enough teachers to go round, but we were all required DO OUR BIT, to help the war effort. All of us who were ten and over were carted off every morning and taken to a farm to pick potatoes in the field. Half a crown a day, (twelve and a half pence) fifteen shillings a week, if you turned up every day. As I drive down Maidstone Road, these days 65 years later, I wonder do the people who live there now, ever realise what was there before them. Do they realise, just how many potatoes the kids of those days picked in a week, for 75p. How about the Yanks black and white that bolstered up frightened children and grown ups all them years ago. When I hear the racist remarks which are in every day use in Leicester. Do these people ever stop to think just what sacrifices that were made so that they can live in freedom? Only the other day I was driving on the A50 at the Newparks roundabout, and I was soundly cursed by an Asian (grentleman) person, for being in the wrong lane. “Hey you old man” he shouted. I just laughed. Hitler couldn’t kill me. So why should he have any more luck.

This story was submitted to the “Peoples War Site by Eve Robertson of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of Clifford Hall 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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