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I remember being evacuated to Leicester when war broke out. I was 11. I lived at Foss Road south with a catholic family but I wasn’t very happy there. After 3 months I came home to Ipswich. We were homesick from the moment we set off, and the lady I was staying with made it clear she didn’t want an evacuee in her house. My 2 brothers were with a different family in Leicester, the Mosely’s, and they loved it. When we came home we’d spend our nights in the air raid shelter in the back garden. It was a big tin thing with a stepladder down into the ground. We were a large family, there were 7 children and we’d all have to sleep together on one big bed. Dad used to watch from the door for the doodlebugs. We’d sit in fear waiting for the doodlebug engine to be cut off and we’d be wondering where it was going to fall. I can’t remember if a it was a bomb or doodlebug, but a house in our road was destroyed.
We used to got down the Lairs (Gainsborough Lane) and we heard an aircraft overhead, it was pretty low. All of a sudden he set out a shower of gun fire and we all lay flat on the ground. Something similar happened when I was in town in Tackett Street near Prices Shoe Shop. My dad made me lay next to the wall of the shop until the plane had gone.

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