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My memories of the last war will stay with me for the rest of my life; some good, some bad.
On the 1st September 1939 my mother, who was a widow, my brother who was six and myself who had just turned eleven, went to school to be told we were going on a train journey to the country where we would be safe. No one was told where we would be going.
We all piled on the train with our teachers and with our gas masks and emergency rations.
When we arrived at our destination we were taken into a church hall. We were lined up like a cattle market surrounded by strange people and faces.
You were then chosen to go with someone if they liked the look of you. I was chosen a number of times but because I had a brother they didn’t want boys and so I was left. As time went by darkness was coming and we were quite frightened. In the end there were only six of us so we were huddled in a taxi and taken round the village to ask if anyone would take us in.
We stopped at this farm house. The couple had three children of their own. They looked at us all and decided that they would have us. Of course they got eighteen shillings per week for each child — which was a lot of money.
We were taken up to the bedroom which had two large beds, so it was four girls in one and four boys in the other.
It was like No Room at the Inn — first up best dressed! And also first up got the most food. The evacuees had to wait until the last.
We had been there three months when my mother decided to take us home. The air raids in Manchester were becoming frequent and she wanted us home with her. If my mother had been killed in the air raids we would have been orphans, so we came home to the Manchester Blitz, Christmas 1939.
We were in and out of the air raid shelters day and night, only going to school part time or not at all.
Fortunately we survived it, but lots of our school friends and families didn’t, which still makes me sad.

Houses were bombed to the ground and the survivors were like dazed refugees walking the streets with their few belongings. They had to sleep in school halls on camp beds. The Red Cross brought them food. We only went back to school once for a reunion after the war, it was very emotional. It certainly had a huge ilmpact on our lives and made us very insecure.

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