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This story has been added to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Ethel Rettie, the story is in her own words..

I had my tonsils out during the war. I remember all the windows being blacked out so I didn’t know whether it was day or night. I was only in a couple of days so I didn’t have any visitors. I was nine at the time at the time and as thin as a rake. When the nurse picked me she was surprised how little I weighed.

I went home in an ambulance with dark window (you could see out, but other people couldn’t see in) and I always remember the ladies down the street coming running to see what had happened, they’d not seen an ambulance in the street before.

M and S had just opened in Burnley and my mother bought me a watch with luminious numbers, very useful for the blackout.

My dad worked in Liverpool; he was a slater, repairing bomb damage. When he came home he used to bring me bananas, oranges and toffee (he’d worked at Williamson’s Factory). I could only eat these in the house in case the other children got jealous.

He also brought me a burnt out incendiary bomb, which I used to keep in my toy drawer. Only one other child knew about it.

I did quite well for toys. I was the only girl on the street so I used to get a lot of hand-me-downs from much older girls. I’m still known as ‘little Ethel’ by some of them!

I remember being at senior school and knitting balaclavas, pullovers and socks. I got a letter from a British airman who was a prisoner of war, thanking me for the balaclava. You had to stitch into each item a label with your name and the address of your school (Burnley Wood Girl’s School).

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