大象传媒

My most vivid and horrifying experience was the night of the 22nd December 1940, the Manchester/Salford Blitz. I was 14 at the time.

The sirens went at 6.30pm Sunday evening and as I walked into the back kitchen the window lit up. I shouted to my father 鈥渢here鈥檚 a fire outside鈥� and ran back to the front room. My father wrapped my sister (who was three at the time) in a shawl we always kept handy, grabbed his jacket, mother and I put on our coats and we opened the front door into the street. My father told us to keep near the wall and stay behind him and we ran to the underground shelter. I will never forget the incendiary bombs exploding as we ran to the shelter. All night we listened to the sounds of the carnage that was going on outside.

The all-clear sounded at 6.45am and we came up out of the shelter after 12 hours. The sky was red with the fires still burning.

When we arrived home we couldn鈥檛 see the fireplace for soot and we just had to start clearing up.

We had another raid on the evening of the 23rd December but only a short one. On the following day the 24th December the military turned up and told us we were to leave the house as the street was being evacuated due to unexploded bombs and we were put into the Carlton Picture House on Cross Lane. From there we were moved to Pendleton High School where we were looked after for two days, even the High School girls came to help. We had sardine sandwiches for Christmas lunch but nothing mattered except we had survived that awful blitz, for which we were thankful, as so many were not as fortunate.

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