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I was almost ten years old when we were told that we were to be evacuated because of the danger to us children should war break out. I already knew quite a bit about the dangers of ‘Hitler’s Germany’ because my parents had taken a Jewish Refugee into our home and we learnt from her what was going on in her homeland.

When the day arrived we were dressed in our school uniform, complete with gas-masks in a brown cardboard box slotted into a knitted cover to make it look less threatening, and each given a brown paper carrier bag containing a few goodies to last us a few days; condensed milk, cream, crackers, corned beef and I can’t remember what else. We had to meet at Victoria Railway Station in Manchester in School Parties. I was with two of my sisters, one younger by two years and one older by four.

When we got to Blackpool we were all assembled in a large hall and the good people of Blackpool came to choose whom they wanted to be ‘billeted’ with them. Possibly because we wanted to keep together we were not chosen by anyone and finally had to be billeted in one of the many Boarding Houses in the town. We had a lot of freedom as the couple who ran the boarding house were not used to looking after children-nor did they have the time. Eventually, we were split up and a very nice family were found for my younger sister and I, my older sister went with some of my school friends. My little sister had been very spoilt at home, being the youngest of a very doting family-many was the night she would cry herself to sleep moaning ‘mummy, mummy, I’m all by myself with Xenie’.

The school I had attended in Manchester was quite a small school run by the Notre Dame Nuns. Since five of my sisters had been or were already there when war was imminent, I was very familiar with the layout of the school-I had been there since I was four years old. The school in Blackpool was a very different matter. It was much, much bigger and nobody seemed to realise how difficult it was to find ones way around it-even to find my own classroom!

Sometimes, I would arrive in the morning and there wouldn’t be any children in the classroom I expected them to be in and there was never anyone about that I could ask. On these occasions, I used to take myself off to Stanley Park and go rowing on the lake! I can’t imagine what my parents would have said had they known, we were never allowed out and I couldn’t even swim!

Gradually, as what was called the ‘phoney war’ dragged on, we were lulled into a false sense of security as the children, including ourselves, filtered back to their homes in Manchester. We lived in a large Georgian house with good cellars; while we were away, these had been converted into bed and living areas, pillars had been put in to strengthen the ceilings and all had been painted in bright colours to make it look cosy.

As soon as we got in from school we used to go down into the cellars to do our homework and get into bed as it was warmer there. There was very little coal or electricity to heat the houses. We had a little Yorkshire Terrier which was truly uncanny at knowing when there was going to be an air-raid long before the sirens went to tell us the German planes were coming. It would run down into the cellar-if it didn’t do so we knew we were in for a quiet night. Thankfully it lived to a ripe old age.
Christmas Eve 1940 was a very bad raid. My parents had prepared as good a feast as was possible with rationing. We were luckier than most, as my fathers patients were always giving us extra things-all was ready for Christmas day-but Hitler had other plans! The landmine a huge bomb, hit the house four doors away, killed eight people, it damaged our own house very considerably, all the pipes were broken, the windows and doors shattered, roof off, lights out.

One memory I have was of dozens of green and red jellies in waxed floral containers, floating in feet of inky-black water which had flooded in the cellars. Fortunately, we were all safe, though there was a horrible moment for my oldest sister who had been out celebrating Christmas Eve. When she returned home, the air-raid wardens would not let her near the house because of the nearby fatalities and they were sure we hadn’t survived. I can’t imagine what went through her mind but she was quite hysterical. Our only victim was our cat which was about eighteen years old, known as Tail-less Lizzie. It had had many lives, but a piece of shrapnel from the landmine proved to be its last.

Once again, the family were all split up; my parents going to stay with another local doctor and his family; my older brother and sisters going to stay with another local doctor and his family; my older brother and sisters going to various friends; while myself, my younger sister and brother going to stay in a little isolated cottage in Derbyshire with one of my mothers sisters.

We spent three wonderful months there even though it was one of the bleakest winters on record. The snow was many feet high round the cottage but we were given a sledge each by kind neighbours. My aunt owned a beautiful red setter. We used to attach it to one of the sledges and it would willingly help pull the groceries from the village a couple of miles away.

My little sister had lost her winter coat when the house was bombed-the only warm outer garment which could be hurriedly found for her when we went to our aunts was a green velvet cloak which I had worn to a fancy dress party. Poor Nanette, the humiliation must have been hard for her to bear as we-my brother and I, wouldn’t be seen dead with her in it! All clothing could only be had with ‘clothing coupons’ eventually enough were saved so that she could have a new coat.

Another terrible deprivation was the lack of sweets. They could only be bought with coupons’ about two ounces a week! Occasionally, we would hear of a shop which sold Victory V’s off the ration. I didn’t like them very much, they ‘smarted’ my tongue, but such was the longing for a few sweets, we would walk about 4 miles in all for a couple of ounces.

My aunt’s cottage had no electric lights, not even gas lights. At dusk my uncle would light all the paraffin lights. And we would play cards or dominoes or ‘tip-it’. To this day, I can remember the lovely warm smell those lamps gave off-those and the lovely log fires.

When we went to bed we slept on large deep feather mattresses-we thought we were in paradise. Even rationing didn’t seem to affect us as there was always plenty of milk, home made bread, chickens and eggs from the neighbouring farms.
Only one thing blighted our lives; at night we could hear the German planes going over the moors and you could see the ‘flares’ that they dropped from the planes so that they could see the ‘targets’ they were aiming for in Manchester and Stockport. We would them remember our parents and be sad and afraid.

Eventually, my parents were allocated a new house-close to a large hospital on the outskirts of Manchester and we all returned to it as one family again. The bombing continued but not so bad-the worse thing was never knowing if it was going to be like the time when we had been ‘bombed out’.

We had to go to a shelter in the next-door-but-one house. This was a rather splendid affair which had an ‘escape-route’ into the garden should the house come down on it! How odd we must have looked-six or seven of us-all dressed in our night clothes, running each night from one house to the other!

My older sisters would not cooperate with my father-saying that they would rather die in their beds if it had to be-this made my parents very upset and I felt very anxious about it also.

Hope hospital was of course bombed very badly so it wasn’t a very happy place to live near. My eldest brother, who was 15 or 16, became a ‘stretcher bearer’ some of his friends doing the same magnificent job were even younger. My now husband was fourteen when they volunteered to evacuate all the patients from the top floors to the basement corridors. The maternity ward was on the top floor-my husband tells some very scary stories which I’m sure new mothers would not wish to know about. The babies had to be moved from the fourth floor to the basement-they couldn’t use the lifts for fear of an electricity cut, nor could they take them one at a time down the flights of stairs. So, they would lay them eight or nine at a time along the stretcher. The first baby was leaning on the back of the boy in front-you can imagine how tricky this was when the stretcher was tilted on the stairs!

On one occasion, when the corridors in the basement were crowded with mothers and babies a huge bomb fell on the hospital, breaking all the pipes and flooding the place, it was very tricky rescuing everyone, especially as it was pitch black.

All the time we were having our nights interrupted by air-raids we had to go to school as often as we could. Food was in very short supply and you had to queue for everything. Sometimes you stood in a queue but you didn’t know what for, until it was your turn-it might be an orange or a banana.

Once, one of the children brought a banana to school-it was paraded round-some of the youngest children couldn’t remember what it was! I was given the banana when my mother was lucky enough to get one. My younger sister got the oranges when they were available. If there was an air raid while we were at school we used to all line up and take our chairs down to the basements. We used to spend our time saying prayers until the ‘all clear’ went!

The teachers did their very best to give is a good education as possible in very difficult times. The classrooms were unheated but we were allowed to wear our outdoor coats, scarves and mittens when it was really cold.
After what seemed to have been most of my life VE finally came! My youngest sister still has amnesia concerning the more traumatic times. One thing neither of us will forget though were the wonderful sights and sounds in Albert’s Square that night, the singing, the dancing, and cheering that went on all through the night. But to this day, I don’t remember how we got home!

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