大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Joan Smith on behalf of Peggy Wood and has been added with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was 22 years old in 1939 and I was doing a teacher training course after completing my degree. When we returned to college after war was declared we weren't allowed to go back to our usual hall of residence. Our warden, Miss Buckmaster, left to become an officer in the Wrens. All of the young menn disappeared to join the forces. They included Maurice Oldfield,who went into intelligence work and later became head of MI6. There were also two conscientious objectors; one was sent to work in the mines and the other into farming. At our new hall of residence, Ashbourne, the system was less democratic than we were uded to and you had to pay to get a better room. From there I went into teaching in Stockport. Gerry, my fiance, had a physics degree and went to Metropolitan Vickers to learn engineering. They started to develop radar, and he was put in charge of that.

All school teachers had to take a turn at firewatching, which meant camping in the staff room overnight. I think we were more afraid of the mice than of the bombs. One night when the bombing was very bad wardens came to take us to shelters because the school was too dangerous. The age at which children started school was lowered to allow more women to work. If there was an air raid warning we had to take the children to a shelter across the field. The classrooms were always cluttered with the childre's coats and gas masks. We had to collect empty boxes and any scraps we could so that the children could make Christmas presents. There were no school holidays because parents were working and we had to occupy the children.

The most memorable event was the Manchester blitz when the bombers tried to destroy Trafford Park which was a very big industrial estate with engineering of all kinds. At the time Gerry & I were visiting his aunt in Staleybridge and we couldn't get back because trains weren't going to Manchester so we had to go back to his aunts. The next morning we got into Manchester and saw the devastation. We were looking for Gerry's father. I said 'I didn't realise there were so many black people in Manchester' and Gerry replied ' They are not black - they are covered with grime and soot with working all night.'

We found Gerry's father who was very shaken. His house had been bombed and he never ever went back to it. We went back to the station which was seething with people wanting to get out of the city. Eventually we got on the train - into a carriage where there was a woman with a parrot in a large cage. We took Gerrry's father to relations in Stockport and then walked the six miles to Poynton.

Because Gerry was working on radar he would sometimes go to work and not return all week. Usually this meant that something big was going to happen. Once when he had been away i realised he had been working on the 'bouncing bomb'( which destroyed important reservoir dams in Germany).
He eventually became ill and I though he hasd sleeping sickness - but the doctor said he was just mentally and physically exhausted.

I also joined the St Johns ambulance Brigade and learned to drive an ambulance -but fortunately never had to do so.

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