Mrs. Perigo

I can remember my husband and I were in the bedroom when we heard the drone of the German planes - awful, menacing noise. We both ran to the window, it was a casement window. I remember fiddling with it and pushing it up. We both stuck our heads out - we were waiting for bombs to start raining down on us, you know, and they just went over. I think they were making for Coventry.

People would say if they're selling so and so at so and so, didn't matter what you were doing you'd drop it rush off to get in the queue. Food got scarce. I remember queuing up for half a pound of cream biscuits - queued for about nearly an hour. Then at another shop, two bananas and one orange. I only had my eldest daughter then. I remember going home with these bananas and these cream biscuits and saying to my daughter, 'Look what Mummy's got for you, aren't they lovely?' So I gave her these cream biscuits and she: 'Pah, pah! Don't like it Mummy.' 'Cos she wasn't used to it you see, and the banana she looked at like this, she were scared stiff of it, she wondered what it was. I said, 'Mummy will take the peel off for you and I'll cut it up and put it on a plate.' So I gave here a little bit...she said, 'I don't like it Mummy.' I thought, 'All that queuing!' Mind you, my husband and I, we ate them after.

I mean you had one egg, two ounces of tea, a quarter of bacon and all things like that, just enough for one week. Sometimes we used to try and save up the milk and put it in a jar, shake it up like that so you could have some cream. It had its funny side, mind, the war, and it had its cruel side, but we muddled through.

We used the bedroom and the living...and they called them a Morrison shelter and they were made of metal and they came in pieces and they were assembled...and it was in the front room on bare boards. When the sirens went - we put all blankets inside you see - and when the sirens went my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law lived next door, they all came into our front room and we all went into the Morrison shelter. Well as I'd got advancing pregnancy I couldn't crawl in there, you know, so I used to go and sit in the pantry on a stool, 'cos I couldn't crawl in there. Oh it was a great ugly thing, some people put them in the garden but my husband says, 'Well we've got an empty room and it's warmer.'

My daughter was born in the Coventry raid. And I can remember the midwife was there and I'd gone on and on and on, I don't know

 where I was, and I can remember them coming in with an old tin bath - remember the old tin baths? My mother-in-law brought it up with her from Wales, she said it'll do for bathing the dog 'cos we had a posh bathroom in the new houses. Everybody used to bath in them old tin baths, you know. I remember my husband and my sister-in-law coming in and holding this tin bath over my head while I lay in bed and the shrapnel was coming down on the roof - bang bang bang bang - they were afraid it was going to come through onto me. The ambulance was trying to get to me...the stretcher was outside the gate but the ambulance couldn't get through for the shrapnel and that. Eventually Carol was born about three days after...three days, three nights. 'Oh dear,' I said, 'I don't want any more.' But I did eventually...I had to go through the same again, my husband said, 'That's it, no more.'

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Margery Milton

We'd all been issued gas masks. I know we were issued them at the GFS on Monday evenings we used to meet there. And we just stood around the fireplace talking and sort of making a joke of it almost, but we always had to carry them around. Then, of course, you'd got your identity cards and your ration books and I did first aid classes. You did fire-watching, well, ARP. I remember the day after it had been announced when some of the Territorials had to join up immediately, you see and I can see those soldiers marching up Station Road - only young lads actually they were. That was the first time we heard and of course, everyone thought there'd be an air-raid that first day but nothing happened - nothing happened for quite a time.

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Mrs. Perigo

One thing that I always remember is when the Scots Guards were off to war. They came up from Coventry road...playing the bagpipes, it was ever so thrilling, beautiful kilts they had, you know, and they went swinging off around where the bingo place is now and down towards the station, and I followed them down pushing Carol in the pram and I thought to myself after, I wonder how many will come back? They all started whistling when the bagpipes stopped, and getting on the trains at Hinckley Station.

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Margery Milton

Back of our house we had a dug out in case of an air-raid. I can remember the first air-raid warning 'cos I'd just come home from work, I was just putting my pajamas on ready to go to bed. The sirens went and down we went to the dug-out. Very confined believe me, but we didn't use them that often. We used to sit in the pantry World War Two.