大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War website by gmractiondesk on behalf of Pam Winter and was added to the site with her permission. My earliest memory is of being asleep in my cot but woken when flying splinters of glass covered me and my mother rushing in in the darkness and wrapping me in a huge balnket and taking me outside. The sky was brilliantly red because the Manchester Docks was burning. The targets were Faires Aviation and Hans Renolyds, both engineering companies but used the spare bombs on the Docks.
I remember going to Briarfield Primary School and having to take gas masks. I remember being transported into a small bus to other primary schools when school meals could not be cooked. Most mothers had to work and those who didn't took the children to school because the others were working. The women worked as clippers on trams, most took in Americans, they had no choice and had to take the men who were allocated to them if they had space. Unmarried or a lady living alone could not take in American men. We thought it was great because we got chewing gum. The women who were billeted got food delivered to their homes, we got tinned fruit and bananas! The people who took in the Americans had supplementary rations. As a child everyone got a toffee jar and were given 2oz of sweets. You were brought up to not eat a sweet when the company you were with did not eat them as well. Before you went to school you had a spoonful of cod liver oil and malt and awful concentrated orange juice. Every Friday night you had a weekly bath because the water was heated by coal. You had a head to tail wash every day but Friday night was bath night. Derbac soap (black soap with a terrible smell) for the hair and then combed with a nit comb. Then you had to have a measure of cod liver oil and orange juice to keep you healthy, you were given a dry piece of bread to take away the taste. You had one egg a week. When you travelled on buses all the windows were blacked out and there was a fine if you scratched it off. All the trees had a big white band as a replacement for street lights. Black curtains were on all the windows and if they were apart the street warden would tell you to close them. I remember the ARP wardens, every area had one. Our warden couldn't find his helmet when the bombing started so my mother gave him the brass rose bell. We were limited in what we had in the way of pans and pots, everything was rationed. All the metal was taken and melted down for making planes etc. but it was proved that they were never used for this purpose.
The Anderson shelter was erected by the local authority in the back garden but they certainly weren't water proof. The shelter was almost always water logged, they were cold and infested but during the day your parents would prepare for the evening, trying to make it cosy. People resorted to converting places in their homes instead of using the Anderson shelter.
The dentist: had to queue on the stair case then sent back to school after treatment. You had to pay the doctor everytime you went, and I had every illness possible. When I was about 7 I had scarlet fever but I wasn't taken into the doctors but the milkman did all my mother's shopping. I was so ill at one time that he brought six lemons and two pounds of sugar to make me more healthy, this was very rare. When my mother went to pay the doctor bill after the war. My father got the British Empire medal which he sent back when the Beatles got theirs! Our GP refused to take payment for the services in respect of my father.
My husbands father was a merchant seaman, as were a lot of lads from Durham. They became seamen because they were so poor and patriotic. He joined the merchant navy and found himself on the North-west passage, one of the most dangerous passages. They were merchant ships who were trying to get supplies to the country. These merchants boats were supposed to be escorted but this didn't always happen. My husband's father was on the SS Montgomery because it was an American ship that was on loan for the war period. It did its war service and then somewhere off the coast of England it took a hit, they found it was somewhere off the Thames still filled with ammunitions! The boat cannot be moved so there is talks with parliament about moving it.

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