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By Katie Millican for Jean Drylie

I was evacuated from Manchester in 1939. My brother and I were in church doing ‘the Messiah’ at the time. Someone had just got up to sing, when the air raid siren went off, and the warden told us to evacuate the building. We went out, and then the shrapnels started going off, so we had to bang on someone’s door, and luckily they let us in.

I was then evacuated to Cheadle Hulme, which was actually only a cycle ride away from my home in Manchester, so it seemed quite pointless. When I arrived there, a friend of mine said ‘I live here’, and she went home. I was quite indignant about being evacuated to Cheadle Hulme, because those from Manchester Grammar had been evacuated to Blackpool, and I thought that it was unfair that we were taken where we were, when they got to go somewhere exciting.

I stayed in Cheadle Hulme for a month, and then I travelled until the summer of 1940. When I went home again, my family had acquired a Morrison shelter. 1940 was the year of the Manchester blitz. In December, there was an air raid all one night, so we had to stay in the shelter for a long time, and when I visited my school the next day, there were land mines all over the school and playing field. We had spent most of the summer moving into that school, and now, by December, it had been wrecked. The rest of Manchester had also been hit by the raid, and so I had to go back to Cheadle Hulme again. York had been hit by raids too, and some shops there which I knew — the Shambles — had been completely demolished along with everything else, but a very old black and white pub had been left standing all on its own.

My second time in Cheadle Hulme, we were all made to stand in a hall, while the people of Cheadle Hulme chose who they wanted to stay with them. We had all been given a brown paper bag with a packet of corned beef, a block of chocolate, and digestive biscuits to give to the families hosting us, but they still didn’t seem too pleased about having to look after us.

The best thing about the war for us was that we were allowed to wear socks, whereas before then, we had had to wear skirts and stockings. That was about the only good thing that came out of it. I didn’t enjoy being evacuated, because I was with an old couple who didn’t seem to like me, and I think they were only too glad to see the back of me, but I was also very glad to go home. The war had seemed quite terrifying, and it was good to be with my family again.

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