大象传媒

I was born in April, 1947, but I was lucky that my mother didn't die six years before I was born. My true story concerns the events of Tuesday, February 4th, 1941. At that time, my father was abroad fighting in the army and my mother, Elsie Welsh, then aged 31, was living in a house in Elm Road, Cheadle Heath, Stockport, Cheshire, with my brother Barrie, who was then two and a half years old.

That night, there had been a heavy German air raid eight miles away in Manchester and the air raid sirens went off in Cheadle Heath. It was 10pm and, because Barrie had a bad cold, my mother decided to hide with him under the stairs instead of in the Andersen shelter in the back garden.

On his way back from heavy flak in Manchester, a lone German bomber pilot decided to drop his last few high explosive bombs as he flew over Cheadle Heath.

As my mother crouched under the stairs with Barrie in her arms, one of the bombs scored a direct hit on the Andersen shelter and the explosion blew the back of the houses in. My mother and Barrie were buried under tons of rubble and it took the rescue party many hours to dig them out. When they were finally dragged out, my mother was struck dumb with shock and couldn't speak for many weeks. But apart from that, she and my brother had had a miraculous escape. Her neighbours were not so lucky, as a number of them were killed, especially along the main Stockport Road, as the stick of bombs carved a trail of death in the blackout darkness.

My mother always said that if Barrie had not had a bad cold that night, they would both have been killed.

They have both passed on now. But I wouldn't be here, writing this at the age of 56, if Barrie had not had a bad cold on that fateful night in February, 1941.

David.

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