大象传媒

I was 12 and was evacuated to Wilmslow on 1st September 1939 war was declared. 2 days later at 11am on 3rd September, they took us all to the Palace Cinema and we were given a carrier bag of groceries donated by local shopkeepers, things like carnation milk and corned beef. We were taken by car then dropped off two or three at a time to the houses where we would stay. I stayed with Elsie and Eric Willocks. Mr Willock's was a haulage contractor. I used to go with him on a sunday round the local farms, collecting milk churns, I returned to Levenshulme in October 1940 before the blitz started in December 1940. I had been getting very homesick.
I kept in touch with the Willocks until they died. Mrs Willocks left me a cob kettle in her will.
In Levenshulme we had an Anderson shelter in the garden. It was covered with soil and grass. We had bink beds. Before an air raid the wireless radio used to go off. My mother would get us to collect the eiderdowns and cushions together ready to go to the shelter when the sirens went. When the Germans bombed it sounded funny like a motobike engine. A biscuit factory got bombed at one point (about 1942). It wasn't so much the bombs but peices of shrapnel that were dangerous. I still have 30 peices of shrapnel. One of my uncles who was in the army came home on leave. He was in the Anderson shelter with us. He left the shelter and used a galvinised bin lid to protect himself from the shrapnel when he went to brew tea in the house.

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