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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lin Freeman of Radio Derby CSV on behalf of Mrs Mollie Carney and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

A NIGHT IN MAY

It was early May during the series of Blitzs the Germans bestowed upon the North West of England in the early 1940’s.
If you could have chosen the place NOT to be that was the place where I lived at the time with my parents.
We lived in a newly built house on the borders of Eccles and Salford 6. Less than a mile away was Hope Hospital.
There was Trafford Park, the largest Industrial area in the North West. There was the Manchester Ship canal that led into the Salford docks.
Along the last few miles of the canal from Eccles to the Docks at Salford were lined either side of the canal with a series of large Oil Tanks.
We had a long back garden and after the lawn and vegetable patch was the Anderson Shelter Mark 2. It wasn’t the first time my father has installed an Anderson shelter. He had dug one in the garden of the house we lived in when the War started in 1939.

The latest edition was well furnished as shelters go. It had three bunks and a thick sackcloth door. There was a lamp on a bench with candles, matches and battery torches and a token first aid box. The earth floor had a wooden duckboard to walk along.
We always took extra blankets and were dressed in Siren suits with hoods over our nightclothes. We filled a stone ginger ale jar with fresh water. Le Battle commence!

We started the night in our beds but by midnight the siren had gone and the heavy drone of heavily ladened German Bombers began to arrive. The Gun battery in nearby Ellesmere Park started to pop-pop feebly through out the raid and the search lights desperately scanned the skies. The noise was deafening. The hum of the planes, the screaming of the bombs followed by the deafening explosions.
Occasionally there was a lull when my father would pop out to see if the house was still standing and he would chat with other men doing the same.
Sleep was impossible during raids. By 4.30am in the morning the bombers had gone, the pop-pops had ceased and the ‘All-Clear’ had sounded. We opened the sackcloth door to clamber out of the shelter and were greeted by a strong orange daylight sky. The garden and house smelled of burning and the bells of the ambulances were constantly ringing.
Trying to sleep for the next couple of hours was difficult. Wondering what had happened and what casualties there were, hindered sleep. We knew the Oil Tanks had been hit.
The next morning it was time to get up, dress and have some breakfast before cycling the four miles across Ellesmere Park to school. Whatever happens, life must go on.

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