Title
Shady Lane
Subject
Shady Lane
Description
Primrose Hall recalls American soldiers and German Prisoners of War at Shady Lane in the 1940s.
Creator
East Midlands Oral History Archive
Source
EMOHA
Publisher
EMOHA
Date
1987
Contributor
Photograph courtesy of Evington Local History and Heritage Group. To use seek permission from chris_hossack@yahoo.co.uk
Rights
You may use item in accordance with the licence http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/
Format
.mp3
Type
Oral History
Duration
1min 42sec
Transcription
Do you remember any Americans in the area as well?
They were posted on the… I think they had tents on the race course, and certainly at Shady Lane. But they used what is now the old swimming pool, it isn’t used, they boarded the floor over, you know, filled the pool in with boards, and I think that was their mess hall, and we used to have a village hall and they used to go there, and of course we’d got a cinema and they used to go in the cinema. We used to speak to them, I remember one used to give all the children, the little boys and girls, a ride round the village in his jeep…I don’t think they were here that long really, came somewhere from Italy to settle down, to go back on D-Day…Course we had the German prisoners here…a lot of them were very young, I mean some of them weren’t much older than us 15 year old children, you know. The same with the Americans, some of those were very young. I remember the one who worked on Oadby Lodge because the people there were friends of ours, my mother used to go up there a lot…and they used to spend a lot of their time cutting out, made marvellous tin toys out of a sardine tin, or a treacle tin. I’ve got a ship in a bottle that one made, gave to the family I suppose, but I’ve kept it. And they made wooden toys. I remember when they first came they camped on Shady Lane, because the Americans built the billets on Shady Lane, then they went and they started bringing the German prisoners over, and it was a regular Sunday evening walk to walk from Oadby to Shady Lane. I don’t know what I expected to see, you couldn’t see much anyway, but I can always remember their singing…it was really lovely.
They were posted on the… I think they had tents on the race course, and certainly at Shady Lane. But they used what is now the old swimming pool, it isn’t used, they boarded the floor over, you know, filled the pool in with boards, and I think that was their mess hall, and we used to have a village hall and they used to go there, and of course we’d got a cinema and they used to go in the cinema. We used to speak to them, I remember one used to give all the children, the little boys and girls, a ride round the village in his jeep…I don’t think they were here that long really, came somewhere from Italy to settle down, to go back on D-Day…Course we had the German prisoners here…a lot of them were very young, I mean some of them weren’t much older than us 15 year old children, you know. The same with the Americans, some of those were very young. I remember the one who worked on Oadby Lodge because the people there were friends of ours, my mother used to go up there a lot…and they used to spend a lot of their time cutting out, made marvellous tin toys out of a sardine tin, or a treacle tin. I’ve got a ship in a bottle that one made, gave to the family I suppose, but I’ve kept it. And they made wooden toys. I remember when they first came they camped on Shady Lane, because the Americans built the billets on Shady Lane, then they went and they started bringing the German prisoners over, and it was a regular Sunday evening walk to walk from Oadby to Shady Lane. I don’t know what I expected to see, you couldn’t see much anyway, but I can always remember their singing…it was really lovely.
Interviewer
J. Flawith
Interviewee
Primrose Hall
Location
Evington
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