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This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Mary Bairstow and added to the site with her permission.

When war broke out I was seven years old and my dad and brother ran a small slaughterhouse in Rimington.

Sometimes as a child I would stay at my aunt's house in Heywood near Manchester. She was my father's sister. The Air Minstry Building was only a mile away and twice, while I was visiting her, the sirens sounded over Manchester and we ended up sleeping in the cellar. There were some very wide shelves down there where wine used to be kept and we slept on the shelves on palliasses. But I was more afraid of going through the big dark house than of the Air Raid.

My father's cousin was a farmer too and his land came right up to the edge of the Air Ministry. If an Air Raid was expected they would milk the cows, then come all the 40 miles up to our house in Rimington, sleep on a camp bed for the night and then go back and milk the cows in the morning.

We had a few evacuees in Rimington. The ones I knew were treated like family. I still correspond with one of them , Iris, who is from Dagenham. She lived next door to us with Mr and Mrs Lancaster who were quite elderly and who never had any family of their own. She settled in well and her brother stayed in a house nearby. But a lot of the evacuees couldn't stand being away from home.

My dad was a butcher - he was also disabled - so he had to be in the ARP. I can still see his helmet now with ARP written on it. He had to go round and look for chinks of light and ask people to draw their blackout curtains tighter.

My mum was in charge of the knitting group /WVS. They used to meet in a group to jog each other along and my mother would distribute the wool. I still have her badge.

The wool would arrive - Air Force blue and khaki and seaboot stocking wool, which was still oily and smelt to high heaven. I knitted dicky fronts - they were always in blue and they were easy to knit. They were roll necks with a square piece beneath, which the forces could tuck down inside their uniforms. Mine went to Iceland. Once I got a card back with Icelandic ponies on it. It was from Henry Leech.

On one occasion my dad nearly went to prison. His was a small butcher's business and so his meat ration was very small - but he did a bit of extra slaughtering and sold some extra meat. On the way to Court the solicitor told my mum, " You must be prepared to come home alone, Mrs Bairstow." But, in the end, my dad wasn't sent to gaol because he hadn't blackmarketed the meat. He had simply sold it at the normal price. Had he blackmarketed, he would have been sent to prison. His misdemeanour was put down as illicit slaughtering.

I remember there was a searchlight battery on Rimington Moor and local girls used to look for the troops. There were lots of ammunition dumps at Paythorne and Bolton by Bowland and I remember a mule train going through Riminton full of mules - part of a whole regiment moving north. It was quite thrilling.

I also remember the prisoners of war - Johnny Carr a bachelor farmer got a German POW - a big guy - who turned out to be really good at cooking and housework. Johnny thought he was in heaven. Johnny was a quiet man but they seemed to be good friends and they got on comfortably. They were very highly thought of locally.

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