大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Jack Oldham and has been added to the site with his permission. Jack Oldham fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

"I was only 4 or 5 years old when the Manchester blitz took place, but I can still (60 years later!) vividly recall a bomb exploding on Gorsey Bank estate. I was huddled in our back garden Anderson shelter, with two people from next door, and my parents and uncle. We heard this whistling or screeching sound getting ever closer, and I recall my Uncle Percy, a World War One veteran, quietly saying "This one's ours". Thankfully it wasn't, but houses were hit in Gorsey Bank, Elm Road and people were killed in the Cheadle area.

My school later on, Cheadle Heath Council - "The Old Tin Bucket" it was a corrugated iron building, received an incendiary bomb on the entrance gates. A lady recently wrote of a land mine hitting the school, thankfully it was not - such a bomb would have cleared half of Cheadle Heath!

I also recall my father carrying me one night as the sirens sounded, but we couldn't get out of the house to the shelter as the anti-aircraft fire fall-back was crashing around outside. This became a new game as we children earnestly collected torn and twisted lumps of exploded shell. Whatever we did with them I don't know.

We had a vile tempered fox-terrier, who was an invaluable early warning system. Before our local air-raid sirens sounded he would prick up his ears and start whining. If my father wasn't around, fire-watching, my mother wouldn't go in the shelter. It was her, me and the dog "under the stairs". This was the proven strongest part of a building, and here we stayed till the "All Clear". I know of two houses locally which were left with only the staircase remaining and the occupants unharmed.

Later in the war came the children's favourites - the Yanks! We used to dash to Cheadle Heath Station in the hope of meeting one or two and then the magic words "Any gum, Chum?" And they never ever let us down. For sweet-starved youngsters they were a God-send.

My most hated memory is having to wear a kid's gas-mask, a red "Mickey Mouse" as they were called, everyone else had a grown-up proper mask."

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