大象传媒

We went out for a walk after we closed the business (my husband ran a greengrocer's shop) and as I stepped out of the house I just looked up at the sky and saw that it was such a starry night. I just said casually 'This is an opportune night for Hitler to come' because it was so bright. I thought no more about it. We came back in and just went to bed.

We got up the next morning, round about 5am, so my husband could go to the market. He would usually go to the market about for about 6 or 7 o'clock to buy stock. This was Smithfield Market in Manchester. Everything seemed just as usual around where we were living. But my husband seemed to be gone for much longer than usual. It must have been after dinner time that he got back because his parents had ben and gone while he was away. I said to him 'Well it's taken you a long time today - where have you been?'

He said 'you know what you said last night when we went out? Well it happened and Hitler came and its taken me this long to get throught o the market and back!'

At that point I realised that we had slept ALL the way through the raid on Salford Docks. We never slpet through another one after that!

ANother time, we came out of the shelter because we wanted to see what was going on. WE could see the incendiaries dropping dwn with parachutes on them. The gas works caught fire and so did the paint factory behind us. It smell terrible.

The warden was shouting to my Grandad 'Put that light out!' but we knew he never turned the lights on and so it meant he was on fire. My husband went over there to see what was up and realised that grandma was actually on fire - the bedroom had caught fire - so he extinguished the flames and brought her down to the cellar to me. My Grandad, the stubbornest man there ever was, didn't believe in going into the shelters so he stayed upstairs. even after Grandma had caught fire.

He said there was quite a lot of damage about and he'd tried to get over the Turnbridge in the docks but he'd missed it. He'd had to take a lot of detours to bring his stock back from the market.

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