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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Kathleen Yearsley and has been added to the sit with her permission…

I was 21 when war broke out and living in a hostel in London, called Ada Lewis House. I was working in the Air Ministry in a secretarial job. The morning of the 3rd of September I had to report to the office, we were told we had to carry our gas masks at all time. The siren went and we had to go into the air raid shelter at Victory House Kingsway. I can recall us all standing there inside the shelters wondering what on earth was going on and the men trying to console us until the all clear went.

That night the sirens went again when I was back in the hostel and we all went into what was known as the trunk room, where they stored all the trunks belonging to everyone. Even the budgie that belonged to the warden of the hostel came in there with us. I lived 2 years in London where I also worked in Whitehall on shift work.

It’s the funny things I remember like when I was working at the ministry a girl friend making me breakfast in bed, scrambled eggs on toast, made with dried eggs. I hated dried eggs they were awful and I hid the breakfast in my handbag until I could dispose of it, I don’t think she ever knew.

I went back to Manchester for the remainder of the war. I was working there the weekend of the blitz at the Ministry of Health, Sunlight House. My parents had come back to Edenfield after being in Radcliffe, where the bombing had been bad. I remember them saying they’d had difficulty getting back though as the buses were no longer running and I’m not quite sure to this day just how they did get back.

Of course there were clothing coupons and I recall my grandma who was elderly didn’t use hers and she would give them to me to use and I used to get nylons from South Africa, they were very good quality and lasted ever so long.

We celebrated back home in Edenfield on VE day and on VJ day I went to Blackpool with one of my brothers and had a ride in a landau and an American gentleman and another lady.

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