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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by on behalf of Hilda Margaret Mellor and has been added to the site with her permission…..

Peg as Hilda is known, can remember the war broadcast at 11am on Sunday 3rd of September 1939 and says that by tea time on that Sunday they had two Territorial Army lads billeted with them, nice lads she recalls.

She lived in Southport and worked at the local library, which kept open until 9pm.
She remembers having to cycle everywhere. Southport had masses of evacuees and civil servants from London and the Palace Hotel in Birkdale was used as a respite for US services.

Her father was a chief radio officer and early in the war had to cross the Atlantic to go to New York. He also took part in training for the Normandy landing and had to go at a moments notice to Inverary in Scotland, the training took part on the Duke of Argyles land and he allowed them to fish whilst they were there.

Her brother joined the RAF and went to Canada to train as a navigator. He flew with Coastal Command, in the small Beau fighter planes, which had just a pilot and navigator He’d just returned from getting commissioned when he was shot down over the Norfolk Coast. His pilot John was going out alone and Peg's brother had insisted on going out with him. They never returned, he was only 21.

Peg’s husband was a flight mechanic and for 5 years he was moved steadily north, finishing up in Iceland. Hilda remembers him saying how numbingly cold it was there and how they got whisky rations to help stave off the cold. On D Day he felt he had to do something to mark it so he climbed a mountain by way of celebration.

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