´óÏó´«Ã½

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

I was 12 when the war started and lived with my parents and two younger sisters at the top end of Healey Heights in Burnley.

My Dad worked in Lowerhouse at Magnesium Electron where he was in charge of the boiler house. There they manufactured a special metal for aeroplanes.

In 1941 I left school and began work in a garage, during the war a lot of car parts were unavailable so we had to improvise due to the shortage of spares. A Mrs. Pollard used to call in quite regularly with her car, which ran on gas, it had a large gas -bag on the top of it. Two of Burnley’s buses also ran on gas, the bags looked like large tents on top of the vehicle and they deflated as the gas was used up. When they ran out they converted back to petrol, this, allowed them to return to Stonyholme Gas Works to be filled up again.

Here are a few of the other war memories that I remember.

A patrolling black out warden spotted a chink of light coming through the curtains of our house and he knocked on the door to tell us. He was told that as well as the light, we also had a ‘jerry’ under the bed.

There were barrage balloons ‘protecting’ a decoy aerodrome at Crown Point, It was manned by the R.A.F. who were billeted around the Worsthorne area.

I remember the sirens warning us to take cover when a bomb was dropped on Thompson Park, this caused the windows to be blown out at the nearby Technical College. At the same time another bomb was dropped on Crown Point.

People traveled from Burnley to Chorley to work in the Royal Ordnance Factory there. They returned home with yellow faces , this was caused by the sulphur they had to work with, which was one of the ingredients that went in to the making of gunpowder.

The Lancashire Aircraft Factory made aeroplane parts, Burnley Aircraft Products owned by Mr. Fletcher produced munitions and Lucas, manufactured generators for tanks.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.