大象传媒

I had just started school when war broke out, and I remember good things and bad - tragedy and triumph, hard times and good times. I remember Mum queueing for three hours, just to buy a few bananas - a novelty for us, as we had never tasted them before. It's hard to imagine now, when you see bananas piled high in the supermarkets, but they were a rare commodity indeed.

Darwen had its fair share of attractive targets which the Germans would have like dto knock out, such as Belgrave Mill and India Mill. Of particular interest was the ICI factory; the use of plastics was still in its infancy, and at the ICI plant cockpits were being made for various planes. I remember, one Saturday night, my mother had been listening to Lord Haw Haw, the infamous traitor who broadcast propaganda on the wireless. He had said that Darwen - "the peaceful valley", as he referred to it - wouldn't be so peaceful tonight, and sure enough, that very evening bombs rained from the sky as a German pilot tried to stop ICI from their work.

On the Monday, as I left Standings opticians in the afternoon, I saw another bomber; very low in the sky, and dropping bombs. One of these bombs fell on Crown Street, and destroyed several houses. My father was in the fire service, and had not long returned from the Blitz, and he was one of the crew who had to deal with the aftermath of the Crown St bomb. Although he didn't tell us much about it, I know that the force from the explosion had been so huge it had killed the local coal merchant by blowing him up a chimney.

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