ARTHUR HAYWOOD
of Griffydam
& Leicester

HILDA SMITH of Aylestone Leicester

HARRY HOLT of Donnington
le Heath
Hugglescote
& Coalville

VIOLETTA MANDERFIELD
of Shepshed

JOHN STEVENS
of Hinckley

EDITH BENNETT of Sharnford nr Hinckley

THOMAS SWANWICK of Blaby Leicester

ALICE TOWNSEND FRETTER
of Aylestone

NORMAN HAYWOOD
of Leicester & Coleorton

SYLVIA HOLT
of Hugglescote and Coalville

JACK STEVENS
of Hinckley

JOAN SWANWICK
of Aylestone & Leicester

ROBERT HAYWOOD
of Leicester

married Aylestone 1971

VALERIE STEVENS
of Leicester

our three grand-daughters

ELEANOR MAY - b. 2001
ROWENA HOLLY - b. 2003
MADELEINE ROSE - b. 2007

Born in 1930, Don's memories are of the events in and around Gough Road, in Leicester, during those years of the blitz. It was a major 'target area' for the Luftwaffe, with so much engineering and industrial premises around.  Gough Rd is at the northern end of the St Barnabas Rd-East Park Rd industrial area, with St Saviours and Green Lane Roads nearby. There was a major boot & shoe factory at the top of their street. A good many of the machines that manufactured most armaments, from small arms to tanks and artillery, or repaired equipment essential for the war effort, was made in Leicester. Major shoe factories, that would make boots for all three armed services, were in the city.

Thankfully the area would not be heavily hit, but it was expected to be so. It is a sobering fact that today's youth would not, could not, put up with as much. Is this how it was for you? These lines quite moved me when I first read them. What did my Mum and her sisters think, as a 10-year old, as she stood at the bottom of her father's Coalville garden and watched the glow in the sky over the fields as Coventry burnt, some 25 miles away?

Fear, I should think - pure, undiluted fear. They must have thought that their world was coming to an end - and for some, it surely did.

1.

Clear moonlit nights filled with the fearful drone
Of war-planes on their odyssey of wrath.
Descendants of the Vandal and the Goth
Extending to the skies their battle-zone.
The thump-thump-thump of anti-aircraft fire
Reverberates around the shelter’s walls,
Unsettles the children in their makeshift stalls
Draws feigned indifference from a troubled sire.
When resonates the All-Clear’s steady wail
White knuckled fists unclench and trembling lips
Begin bravado’s artificial chants.
Recidivists and those who nightly fail
Conceal with overcoats the sodden slips
And dark-stained trews that brand them miscreants.


by Donald Russell Haywood ©1999

2.

During WWII, city children in their last year at school were allowed to volunteer to pick potatoes and supplement the deflated workforce to garner this vital harvest.

Unbuttered bread , but with a scrape of marge,
Stale cheese, or jam soaking into the bread.
The outer leaves of lettuce and onion spread
Between hard crusts, loaf-ends cut overlarge.
This simple fare, brown paper wrapped, re-used
From yesterday and loosely tied with string
Sustains soft sinews through the wearying
Cortege of snail-like hours - youth’s dance abused.
As evensong wafts softly from the church
Tired limbs descend ungainly from the bus
That brought the schoolboy home from the fields of toil
Clutching potatoes on his homeward lurch.
Devours his prize as mother starts to fuss
And scrapes his boots free of the foreign soil.


by Donald Russell Haywood ©1999

2.

Don used to work down Snibby Pit, in the early 50's. He recalls the feeling of luxury when the new pit-head baths were opened, just across the Ashby Road from the pit itself. I recall my amazement to learn that the baths had to be built and paid for by the colliers themselves! They all paid a penny a week out of their meagre wages for the 'privelege' of a bath and going home clean. No wonder they became so militant with bosses as tightfisted as that !!

SNIBSTON COLLIERY,
Coalville, Leicestershire.

Brief wraithes of steam unfurl pale arms,
With fingers, unsubstantial, fey,
Grope dark discoloured walls before
Evaporating all away.


Twin contra-turning pulley wheels,
Their spokes in stroboscopic race,
Disclose the vertical approach
Of colliers from their working place.


Hauled swiftly from the caverned streets
Of a sprawling subterrainean wen
They dash across the Ashby Road
In little knots of shabby men.


Torn, shapeless trousers, knee-pad girt,
A No-So patch unsullied yet,
Coal-blackened faces zebra-striped
From dried-up river-beds of sweat.


Honed through the adolescent years,
From male exclusiveness distilled,
Come ribaldry and cutting wit
As requiems for stints fulfilled.


As colliers make this brief traverse
Their banter's often overheard
But some will cross the road and make
The pithead baths without a word.


Garrulous or taciturn
They hasten to the shower jet
To be reborn beneath the flow
And cleanse the skin of grime and sweat.


But cleansing showers and draughts of air
Inhaled above the terrestrial crust
Could not begin to purify
Nor ever cleanse the lungs of dust.


by Donald Russell Haywood ©1999

Uncle Don died in 2017, aged 86.

I have decided to publish all of his poetry on this website, and so will progressively type up each one and post it here.

Don typed up each of his poems, and kindly gave them to me as a 'collected set' in a folder for my keeping. He also numbered them and organised them, with an index, into an order of his own design.

They will appear here just as he wote them.