大象传媒

Recorded by Pamela Brown

I was 9 years old when the war started, we lived in Spring Gardens Stockport.
There were five children at home and my father was away at the war. We enjoyed our childhood playing out all the time. As I grew up there was always plenty to do, we didn鈥檛 need much money, there was the cinema and later dance halls.
At the beginning of the war the ARP were in the school cellar and we sat there for hours helping them to put an extra green bit on all the gas masks. This was supposed to be an improvement to the original design. We did 2,000 of them. The warden in charge was Mr Steel who lived in Webb Lane.
On one occasion we went up Kinder Scout to see a German bomber that had just been shot down. In truth we could not see very much because there were so many army around still sorting things out, but it was very exciting.

I remember when the Americans came they took over the Old Rectory and they were always giving us chewing gum and toffees. We thought they were great.
We spent a lot of time in the air raid shelters and there was often gunfire. Every morning we would go out and collect the shrapnel from the anti aircraft guns. We all had a large collection and used to swap them with each other.

In 1943 I saw a large convoy of a Canadian Regement driving through Stockport in their armoured cars. I daresay they were going to the Armoury overnight on their way down to D Day.

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