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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Margaret Jackson and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was living in Bretherton about ten miles from Liverpool and was ten years old when war broke out in September 1939.

Both sets of grandparents worked the land and farmed so at home we had potatoes and plenty of bacon and eggs most of the time.

I attended Bretherton Church of England School and I remember there were three lady teachers there. We were all given gas masks and had to practice putting them.

Some of the time we had evacuees staying with us from Liverpool and I can remember them being rough and tumble, very street wise as they say today. They certainly weren’t like us.

From where we lived we could see the fires and searchlights from the city, Liverpool was heavily bombed. The planes would fly over us; they were looking for the Royal Ordinance Factory at Euxton, but they didn’t find it; as it was underground with grass over all the top of it, so that from the air it looked just like any other field.

Of course most things were in short supply and although we had plenty of bacon and eggs, sweets were on ration. I can remember spending a farthing, or a quarter of an old penny on them. I can also recall the blackout, no one had to show a chink of light and the sticky tape criss crossing the window- panes. All in all though Bretherton was quiet and the days passed fairly uneventfully.

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