大象传媒

I was ten years old when war was declared. I lived at 22 Hall Street Barrow-in-Furness. When the town was bombed in 1941 I, with my mother, brothers Dennis and Harold, and sister Kathleen would walk the two miles to Sowerby Woods with a handcart and sleep in the woods for a few nights with many other people. We did this for a few nights while the bombing was going on, then one night in May 1941 Hall Street was bombed and our house was destroyed. At first we stayed at two rest centres in the town, in Thwaite Street School and Greengate Street School.
My two brothers and I were then evacuated, Dennis and I went to Arnside and Harold went to Milnthorpe, where we stayed for about two years.
When we returned to Barrow-in-Furness to start work my parents had moved to a council house, number 51 Vulcan Road. I started work as a telegraph boy in June 1943. Dennis was an apprentice bricklayer and Harold was an apprentice painter in Vickers.
While we were living at Vulcan Road in the summer of 1943 we received an Anderson air raid shelter to be put in the back garden. My brothers and I dug a hole and erected the shelter in it. We then covered it with soil and put sand bags around the entrance. The first time we used it there was a foot of water in the bottom! Nobody had told us about the high water table in the area! Daddy was not pleased about it.
During our time moving about in Barrow, at various times we slept in a church hall in Pennington and a chicken shed on the road to Leece. My Dad was doing his service in the Home Guard. What a relief it was when the war ended.
I was called up to do my two years of National Service in 1947.

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