大象传媒

This story has been submitted to The People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Mary Meehan and added to the site with her permission.

I was a young child in the War and I remember the Air Raid shelter near the Bowling Green. There were little gas mantles and the boys used to pop them so we'd end up in complete darkness.

I remember my mother getting a telegram and sitting, crying at the table. My father was missing, presumed dead. It turned out that he had actually been killed in Italy. It was the first time I recall her saying, "Blooming Germans."

I was only young and couldn't express my feelings but I remembered how my dad had been home on leave and bought me a bicycle. There had been a lot of snow in the winter of 1942 and I couldn't ride it to church until my cousin had gone ahead of me and flattened the snow.

My mum just had to get on with it. She worked at the Munitions Factory. I was an only child and my grandmother brought me up. I may have lost my dad but I gained another mum. My auntie had a farm at Aintree and we used to get supplies from it. I remember the orchard and the pigs and the hayloft, how we'd go to the cattle market and how we churned our own butter on the farm. We couldn't play out till we'd finished all our jobs. It was a lovely life. Everybody shared and there was no selfishness.

My mother was at the Factory making bombs. She used to come home yellow after she'd been working with TNT. She told me how one night she and some others had come outside the factory, which was completely covered in grass. It was like a grass dome with a little doorway in the side. They saw a German plane coming over and it flew so low that they could actually see the pilot. They thought they were for it - but he just waved at them and carried on. He must not have known what they were making underneath the grass.

I was about six when it all ended.

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