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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Eric Midgley and has been added to the site with his permission…

I was 8 years old living with my mum, dad and sister at 6 Branch Rd Burnley. The house was between a cake shop and a chip shop, fish and chips were not rationed and they opened three days a week.

As war was declared on a Sunday, dad volunteered for the RAF on the Monday as a P.T. instructor and whilst he was away, the words of discipline from mum, ‘I’ll tell your Dad,’ were always enough to make us behave.

Mum went to work every day at 6am at Robert Pickles, she was a weaver and ran six looms. So my sister and myself more or less brought our selves up during the war. I would get up and light the fire before going to Todmorden Road School, where I had my dinner, I later moved o to Townley school.

Crown Point nearby was manned by the United States Army and Airforce and looked like an airfield, after the sirens went, the ‘runway’ lights would be switched on, this was done .to confuse the enemy planes. After school dinners we would go to the golf course and carry bags for the servicemen and sometimes we would play hookey and not go back to school.

I remember milk being three old pennies a half pint and six pennies a pint. With half a penny, or one penny refund when you took the bottle back. There was also one penny on the return of a jam jar.

Fuel was scarce and we used to buy gas coke two or three times a week. Some cars had bags of gas on their roofs and metal covers over the headlights with slits in them. Buses towing a truck with bags ran on methane gas.

There were heavy smogs in Burnley due to 27 deep and cast coalmines, with 120 weaving shed chimneys pouring out black smoke.

There were air raid shelters in backyards and we had blankets over the windows for blackouts and a 9 inch cardboard tube with string fastened to it, this pulled over a rose hook and fastened to the door, so that when it opened it drew the tube over the light.

There were two well known ‘knocker uppers’ one called John Willie Blue and the other Robin, a notorious character up and about at 4am. You had to pay him for his services and I remember him calling to collect four pence from my Grandma who was a clairvoyant. We used to try and keep him talking to keep him up, but he would say it was his bedtime; it would only be about 6pm.

Lord Haw Haw broadcasted at ten past nine nightly, he was an Irish American with a British passport and he would often mention places in Lancashire that he said had been bombed.

Dad came home on leave twice during the war, once at Christmas to 103 Lyndhurst Rd. where the railings had been taken down for the war effort. A German plane flew over and dropped a bomb on Thompson’s Park. There was this big flash and dad fell over the garden wall.

On VE Day the local people held a huge outdoor party with tables and chairs on the spare land off Accrington Road. Annie Street had the most decorations and there was a large bonfire on which an effigy of Hitler was burnt.

There was no party on VJ Day, but I remember the rationing was still on.

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