By Maryam Patel
Imagine a place without a penny to your name and something as ordinary as a piece of fruit being a complete mystery.
For Derrick Hopewell and his wife Pauline Miller-Hopewell, this was a reality of growing up in Leicester during the Second World War.
Starting out as childhood neighbours, their lives took separate paths before bringing them back together decades later.
Now, as the country pauses to remember those who served and sacrificed during wartime, Derrick and Pauline’s memories offer a glimpse into a childhood far removed from the one much of the current generation experience today.
From the streets of Leicester, their stories reveal the impact of war beyond the battlefield and how it left imprints on the children who grew up in its shadow.
Born on Conduit Street, near Leicester’s bustling railway station, Derrick, 93, lives with Alzheimer’s but still recalls a childhood marked by poverty and an absent father, who was fighting in the war.
Derrick’s father was rescued from Dunkirk where he was wounded. Once he had recovered, they sent him out to the critical battleground in Egypt to fight.
“He was attacking and retreating, attacking retreating for the next five years and came back in 1945,” Derrick says. “I didn’t know my dad.”
Although the generation who fought have almost completely left us now, there are still many people who can recall Leicester at war.
The city’s darkest hour came on November 19 and 20, 1940, when 108 were killed and hundreds more injured in the Leicester Blitz. It was the most destructive bombing raid on the city, which was targeted as a diversion for the attack on Birmingham and Coventry.
The air strikes targetted the railway station on London Road, and the residential district of Highfields was among the worst affected. Many houses and businesses were destroyed. Derrick lost his home.
But he had never felt such a sense of relief than after being bombed and moving up to Braunstone. “We had moved into heaven. We had got a bathroom.”
Born as war broke out, Pauline, 87, faced her earliest years filled with air-raid sirens and a rush to find shelter.
Her family lived on Brunswick Street, St Matthews, and she can recall her father’s stories depicting the terrors faced daily.
“Sirens would go off, and they would say ‘you got to get out, you got to go, go down to the cellar’, so we did that most nights.”
One specific night she recalls her father telling her he heard a whistling sound. A bomb, about to hit. Her memory paints a picture of terrace houses each with an arch above alley way to the garden. “He said ‘dash in here, dash in here’, or else we would’ve been blown up on the street,” she said.
Pauline’s babysitters were an elderly couple who treated her with utmost kindness and one day their eldest son came back from his post in the army. He brought a suitcase full of something she had never seen before: an orange. “None of us had ever seen an orange, there was no fruit. I was like what is it?”
Pauline describes her memories of waiting in line with ration books, queuing for a food stamp, all simply to get a little bag of sugar, possibly tea and never butter.
“You didn’t have any food. But I can never remember being hungry. What you never had you can’t miss.”
Whilst Derrick’s childhood was shaped by his father’s absence during the war, his own life would later take him into the army.
In his twenties, he joined the 47th Royal Dragoon Guards, eventually finding himself serving in a role he had never expected.
Stationed in Libya he recalls being pushed to his limits during training before his regimental sergeant approached him with an unexpected instruction: ‘I want you’.
He was subsequently detailed to the guard of honour for the Secretary of State for War.
His military career would eventually take him to London, where he took part in duties surrounding Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953. This included march coordination and ceremonial escorting.
“We controlled the parade and everything,” said Derrick
As Remembrance Day returns, Derrick and Pauline’s memories serve as a reminder of why the experiences of those who lived through the war must never be forgotten.
Historian Austin J. Ruddy, who has documented the destruction caused by the Leicester Blitz, stressed the importance of preserving the city’s wartime history and ensuring it is not lost to future generations.
“If we don’t talk about the history, then history only repeats itself.”
Having witnessed Leicester transform over their lifetime, the couple reflect on a city vastly different from the one they knew as children. Despite those changes, Pauline says they continue to feel respected and welcomed by the people around them.
“We find that we get respect from the foreigners from all over the world, which I think is wonderful.”
