大象传媒

1939
War was declared on September 3rd 1939. This event altered the whole of our lives. We young people aged 18 and over. At the time I was working in Manchester, in the gown department of a wholesalers. I was able to catch a train at 8 o'clock in the morning from Flixton, arriving at work to "clock on" which we did with a card which was inserted in a machine giving the time of arrival. The department was run by a Miss. Owen who was deputy buyer, Mr. Burnell having been called up shortly after war had started.

The war brought great changes to all of our lives. We were issued with ration books and we had to work out how to make 2oz butter, 2oz marg and 1 egg last each us one week. The lights went out and we had no lamps at all in the streets, or buses, or stations, the lights just went out. The trains and buses continued to run on time during the day. We were allowed a small torch with a pin-point of light. We all had to buy black material to put up at our windows so that no light showed at all. In those days in the winter we had what were called pea soup fogs.
A pea soup fog was a horrible smoggy, smelly fog created by all the furnaces burning.

1940
I was a member of the Congegational Young peoples fellowship. We held a meeting each Monday evening. This consisted of two groups of young people the 18-24 year olds and the older group of 24+. We must have had around 30-40 people in our group. Very slowly most of the boys began to dissapear into the different services, Army, Navy and Air Force. The girls were also begining to feel they should join the services.

At the time I had a boyfriend called John Tyson. He would always walk home with me from the church to Flixton which was a good mile. On one occasion when we were having a party at Margarets house in Urmston there was a pea soup fog. It had been arranged for me to leave the party and for me to catch the last train from Manchester but owing to an unforseen accident (yes, we did lark about in those days) one young man had to be taken to hospital to have some stitches in his hand. We missed the 10 o'clock train so John decided he'd better walk me home. This we did slowly progressing in this horrible pea soup fog to Flixton. In the mean time my mother was getting extremely worried because the train had been and gone without me on it. She sent my father out to meet me. He in the fog crossed the main road and while John and I were walking down one side of the main road, daddy was walking up the other. Poor man, he arrived home rather cross and late with me safely at home.

The next day on the Sunday Mr. Gasford announced that he was closing down the young peoples fellowship because of a small bomb landing in a street not very far from the church. At the same time most of the young people had left the church for the services including John.

I still continued to work in Manchester but was begining to feel that I should do my bit for the war. Being turned down by the services because I had a hole in my heart. I went to the employment exchange to see about finding a wartime job. I was sent to Trafford Park where Metropolitan Vicars Engineering Works was based (Remembering myself as a sweet and inocent 18 year old girl, I found it rather hair-raising). Full of noise and dirty streets. I was told to report to a small factory in Davyhulme. So I went off at half past seven one Monday morning to find myself going through the doors into a huge factory full of noise, smell, oil, food, anything you can think of really. There was an engine running which I discovered was an engine for the Merlin Bomber planes. These huge engines were dismantled after 24 hours of running. Every part being stripped down and laid on a long table where we girls had to sit and check all the different parts over and over for burns, dints, bumps and if found they had to be reported to the supervisor. These engines were then assembled and run again for 12 hours before being taken back to Metropolitan Vicars ready for going into the planes.

At lunch we had half an hour to eat our cheese sandwiches and hot cups of tea. The men and women in that factory all worked extremely hard. How many engines we checked over in a day, I cannot remember now. The girls were a cross section of girls from all walks of life, country girls, business girls, married women, and widowed girls who had already lost their husbands during the war.

The war was progressing but we in Flixton were not aware of the tradgedies occuring in Germany and the continent because we just weren't told of all the terrible things happening. All we had were the radio reports, news which was only available when we went to the pictures and read newspapers.

In the meantime I had had a letter from someone called Kenneth Heap who I had known vaguely as he was in the senior section of the young peoples fellowship. He asked me to go to a dance at the Univesity of Manchester where he was studying medicine. I rang up only to be told the dance was cancelled because of the war. So it was arranged we would meet on the train, he living in Urmston where we would arrive in Manchester and go to the cinema. This commenced our relationship and when he qualified in 1942 we got married in the November of that year.

1942
He got a job at Clatterbridge hospital for 3 months waiting for his call up papers. I moved to Clatterbridge with him and got a job at Lever bros. soap factory learning all about aeroplane wings.
There for the first time we came across the horrific bombing in Liverpool as the Germans came over to the port every night to bomb the shipping area.

1943
When I knew I was having my first child I was given the sack and was not allowed to work. By then my husband was in the REMC (Royal Engineering Medical Corp.). I then had troubles arranging where to live. I was going live with my sister (now 96) in Stockport, her husband was in the fire service helping to feed the firemen on a shilling a day in Liverpool.

My first baby was born in Adlington Hall, Cheshire. This was because all the mothers to be at St. Marys hospital were evacuated out. Manchester had been badly bombed at Christmas in 1941. We had all cried when we saw the devastation of the bombs.

1944
I went to live with Nanny and Grangran while my husband had been in the services. We kept hens. Receiving a letter to say that Ken was sailing in a convoy when his ship had been hit by a torpedo where they sat in the channel all day waiting. They managed to pursuade the Naval Commander to allow the ship to be towed in because of all the wounded inside the ship. Luckily my husband escaped injury by three seconds.

We bought our own little house where I lived with my daughter and awaited the return of my husband. At the end of the war he joined a practice as junior partner in Monton Green where we stayed for 27 years.

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