Blitz seen out under table with my mother

LIKE your correspondent, Brian Lord (“I will never forget night of November 19, 1940,” Mailbox, November 24), I’d like to share with your readers how my mum, the late

Muriel (Billie) Wells, and I spent the night during the bombing of Leicester on November 19, 1940.

I was just 22 months old so the story was told to me later.

My dad, the late Allan Wells, was a bandsman in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps.

In October 1940 he was posted up to Leicester from Portsmouth and, as he didn’t want to leave us in Portsmouth with the regular bombing raids, Mum and I came with him.

He rented a house in Burleigh Avenue, Wigston Fields, for us and that’s where Mum and I were on that night.

It was her 21st birthday and she was missing her family. She’d written to her mum and told her they should come to Leicester to avoid the bombs in Portsmouth.

When the sirens sounded, Mum responded by taking me under the dining table and we sat there until the all clear sounded in the early hours of November 20.

We were safe, as was our immediate area, but Mum knew that areas of Leicester would be devastated, recalling scenes in her home town.

The table that was our refuge on that night has its own story.

Soon after we arrived in Leicester my mum began to play the piano at lunchtimes in Lewis’ restaurant.

We didn’t have much furniture and she saw a dining table and four chairs for sale in the furniture department. It was known as utility furniture.

She couldn’t afford it so she asked if she could pay for it with her earnings from the lunchtimes.

She expected to have to wait until she’d paid the full amount before it could be delivered but the manager arranged for it to be delivered the next day – just a couple of days before November 19.

The chairs have long gone - but I still have the table in my home.

Pat Wells, Wigston