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This is one of the stories collected on the 25th October 2003 at the CSV's Make a Difference Day held at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Manchester. The story was typed and entered on to the site by a CSV volunteer with kind permission of John Smith.

Wartime Memories.

I lost my mum just prior to the war, one of the earliest recollections I have is being really frustrated, because at then local cinema, ‘The Borough’ in the Ordsall area of Salford, near the docks, ‘All Quite on the Western Front’ was about to be shown, but as war had just been declared they decided to take the film off. I was frustrated as I wanted to see the film and it was another twenty years before I got to it.

My recollections most vividly are of the Christmas blitz. I lived with my father in a terraced house opposite a pub called ‘The King Billy’ in Robert Hall Street, at the back of that were terraced houses and St Joseph’s Catholic School and church. I had a budgie called Billy and a goldfish called Chubby. During the Christmas blitz, for some reason, in took the budgie from its spot on a spring near the window and the goldfish from its stand on the widow sill and put them in the alcove nearest the stare recess. I still don’t know why I did this. We also had a dog called Teddy. We had settled down for the night and the air raid sirens sounded. My father had always said if we were to be bombed, we would be bombed in our own home as the air raid shelter was too damp and cold. So we sat there, and suddenly the bombers came over they were dropping the whistling bombs, these were the worst. They would whistle and then there would be silence, then they would go off. There was a massive raid that night. Looking out from the windows we could see red in the sky over Manchester, red in the sky over Old Trafford and Trafford Park. I think that was the night the United ground got bombed, combined with them both, It was like daylight outside, shells were exploding in the sky. We went back and sat by the fire, and suddenly the windows blew in, everything went. What had happened is a land mine had exploded on the school next door and flattened everything, my father sprang up and banged the light off, and luckily the blackout curtains had stopped the glass. The front door had been blown across the street to the pub opposite; the soot came down the chimney and buried the dog.

My sisters’ husband was in the RAF, he was down at Biggin’ Hill, a fighter station down south. Our immediate thought was to get across to see how she was, she was by herself. We brushed the soot off the dog, my father grabbed the bird cage which was safe in the alcove, the fish had to fend for its self. We went out through the doorway, people were milling round in the street, it was like hell on earth. Shells were going in the sky, it was just like daylight. Really they didn’t have enough guns, they had mobile guns but not enough anti-aircraft guns, they’d run to one end of the street and fire, then run to the other end and fire, to pretend they had more guns than they did. We ran across the street to my sisters. She was in the cellar, we made sure she was ok and sat on the cellar steps until the raid was over at about 3am.

When the raid was over we went home, we were whacked out, when we lifted the bedclothes the glass went off the bed and we had to lie fully clothed. In the morning my father had to go to work with hardly any sleep, he was working at Chorley and had to go on the train. I went to see a friend Harold Broadbent, his mum and aunt worked as ‘nippies’ in the local Lyons Corner House in Manchester. We took the tram as far as we were allowed, this was Deansgate, and then walked up Market Street. There were hoses everywhere, the fire service were still trying to damp down, it was devastation down there. They managed to get up to the corner house but they wouldn’t let them in as it was in a dangerous position.

Opposite the King Billy was a one storey butchers shop, the man there had two sons who worked for him. I saw one, Joe, who was 35 a few days before, at the cemetery when I’d been to my mums’ grave. That night seven of his family died including one soldier home on leave.

We used to go out collecting shrapnel, we could tell which was a shell, which was a German bomb, and if you found one with markings on that was the ultimate. Don’t ask me what happened to them but I had a heap of them! I remember a lad of about 15, he’d been out playing cards at night and when he came home all there was was one big hole where his family had been. That was it, it was rough.

I would be lying if I said we weren’t scared but you did get use to it, but the whistling bombs were meant to scare you, it was the silence, you didn’t know where they were going to land.

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