´óÏó´«Ã½

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Sharon Lambert of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Jack Watson and added to the site with his permission.

When the War broke out it was sad really because we started losing all the lads from around. My brother went in the RAF, one of my sisters went in munitions and one went up to the County Mental Hospital to work. I was the youngest of the lot. My dad was an ARP warden.
I went to Greaves School early on in the War and of course we lost all our teachers because they all went in the forces. So we were taught by the older teachers who had come back from retirement. And we never did any lessons hardly because they used to say there’s a teacher off today and we just had to go and ‘dig for victory’ down at the back of the school and put potatoes in.
There were no cars on the road because you couldn’t get petrol unless you were an emergency service or a doctor, things like that. Lancaster virtually had no cars at all.
And I can always remember Barrow being bombed: because the aeroplanes used to come in from Germany very heavy and droning and they used to head for Williamson’s Park memorial, and then turn at Williamson’s Park and go over to Barrow. And you could hear Barrow being thumped with the bombs. And then you could hear them coming back, lightly loaded, droning away in the distance. And all the barrage balloons right round Barrow. We went up by St. Mary’s Church on the top, the Priory Church, and we could actually see all the sky lit up across the bay at Barrow.
As the War finished the family all got back together and all went back to normal really.

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