大象传媒

3/9/39 I remember the day war started, I was nearly 14 years old, my sister and myself were in the the garden when my father came and called us into the house. We listened to the wireless to hear Neville Chamberlain announce the outbreak of war
At first nothing seemed to change much but then familiar faces were only seen when they came home on leave from the Armed Forces. Very soon after I started work and became used to seeing people of all nations in uniform on the streets of Manchester.
Then of course the air raids started and we had about 3 days of blitz on Manchester. Me and some of my colleagues were stranded during an air raid in a shelter in Piccadilly Gardens. The buses had stopped running when the raid started and we could not get home. We sat for hours on forms around the side of the shelter. There was no heating and it felt damp and claustrophobic. Of course you could hear all the bombs outside. It was five o clock in the morning when I arrived home.
My father had joined the Red Cross as a first aider based at Withington Hospital and had to do regular shifts there until the end of the war. He also had two allotments where along with the garden he grew all the vegetables we needed until rationing ended. My mother like most women of her generation had not worked since she married, now had a job which continued until about a year after the war ended... but that was normal during WW2.

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