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This story was submitted to the website by Karolina Kopiec from ´óÏó´«Ã½ GMR Action Desk on behalf of Marjorie Fletcher and has been added to the site with her permission.

I particularly remember the outbreak of WW2. I was almost 11 years of age and mother and I was on a train returning from Manchester. We seemed to spend hours trying to get home and when we finally arrived, hours later than planned; we immediately started to put up black out curtains at the windows- even before we’d unpacked. I lived in Royton and a mill used for the storage of cotton got a direct hit from an incendiary bomb and went up in flames. The bombs dropped in a line in the fields behind our houses and made large craters, and it wasn’t until 1949 before the damage was totally repaired. We had scaffolding around the house and I couldn’t have my 21st party at home.

One of my most poignant memories was of seeing a soldier returning house on leave and his wife running all the way up the lane to meet him. She threw her arms around him and he dropped all equipment and hugged and kissed her. He never came back.
I still have a copy of our local fire-watching teams’ rota made out by my father’s copper-plate handwriting, and some of those who later were called up didn’t make it home.

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