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Videotape of interview with Lynne Ashton Transcribed by J David 23/9/05

Mr Le Moignan. My name is Ronald John Le Moignan, and I was born in 1936, May 18th 1936
My father, a fireman, was stationed for a while at Wrexham in North Wales.
I remember going on a boat journey on the Llangollen Canal, and I remember that quite well, and I also remember I broke my ankle there as well, not on the canal but in where our residence was at the time which as I can recollect was some flats, I had to go to the local hospital for treatment and that was quite dramatic. From there on my father and the family - my mother as well of course, and my younger sister, Beryl, who was a year younger than me, moved around a fair amount and I have hazy recollections of that, I suppose the next significant thing was that we were bombed out, we suffered air-raids, and the house that we were in was quite extensively damaged and all the front of it was blown away.
I think it was in Wallasey, in the Midlands. It was somewhere in the Midlands, I believe, and I am sorry I can’t put a name to that place. At the time it was dramatic, but of course one’s memory doesn’t remember dates and names when one is that young, and the significant thing there, I do know that when the air-raids were on we used to spend our time under the kitchen table or under the stairs, and I can remember those times vividly, And I do remember that there were tremendous raids, we were all frightened.
[pause]
I………. Your father was transferred where there was most …
Mr Le Moignan. Action.
I………. In the raids, was his job to put fires out?
Mr Le Moignan. Yes, absolutely. And so we were there in the hot-spots in the early days. I remember coming out from underneath the stairs, and we were billeted in a kind of Victorian house, which had carvings around the ceilings, as we have modern now, but in polystyrene. But I do remember significantly one of the significant things there, or in fact two. One was looking out as I went upstairs from where I was. I think the stairs we were in was in the cellar of this house, This was a house which actually in those days the coalman used to arrive, and there was a round grating, and they used to lift the grating, the round disc, and used to deposit the coal, a hundred-weight at a time in those days, of course, down through, and grating was in the pavement in those days, down through into the cellar, and I remember coming out into the main room and seeing the chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but there was no front to the house at all. And I can remember hoses, dozens and dozens of hoses, and what I now know to be a little Dennis pump was out in the middle there, pumping away, and vibrating, and everything was trembling, and all the houses down the road had been demolished, and all sorts of things. [pause] sorry about that, it brings back significant memories.
I………. Of course it does, and it is interesting that it is so many years later. Isn’t that extraordinary
Mr Le Moignan. Yes…
I………. It shows how deep and how powerful these thing are…l
Mr Le Moignan. Of course it never surfaces until you talk about it, and quite frankly I’m quite surprised that I am affected as much, and I have no explanation for that, I just think it was a significant event in my life.
I………. What happened later on? Did this pattern follow all through the war, your father was moving an you just followed as a family?
Mr Le Moignan. We moved around a fair amount at that time, but towards the end of the war — I can’t fill in too much of the middle of the war — we moved to Manchester, we lived at number 48 Chipping Street, Longsight, Manchester — I remember that address because it was engrained in my mind, and we had the family Smiths across the road, and further down the Catttermoles, two names which I remember significantly.
I………. You can probably remember the phone number, can you?
Mr Le Moignan. We didn’t have phones in those days, so there must have been a method of contacting my father, I think, however it was Coronation Street type accommodation where we lived, and the ladies used to colour their front door-steps with pumice-stone and all different colours, and it was a paved pavement, again with the coal hatches for emptying coal. Down the road there was a newspaper shop called Farnsworth, and just across the road at the end was the school where I was educated, which was Stanley Grove School, Longsight, Manchester. And that again was right alongside St Cyprian’s Church, which is still there, and incidentally I have never been back since the war, I have not revisited, I think I might find that painful.

Ron Le Moignan

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