大象传媒

This story has been collected by Annabelle Caton, Megan Lowery and Michael Usher with the assistance of Sue Flowers, Green Close Studios and has been added to the site by Anne Wareing of the Lancs. Home Guard.

Mrs Clark was 6 when the war started and 12 when the war ended which means that the war went on for six years. She had a brother and a father but her father was ill when the war began and her brother was three years younger than her.

Mrs Clark had been told of a bomb behind her old house, it was dug well into the ground in a field and it was hard to get out, so they had to get bomb disposal men to take it out. It was quite an amazing thing. "It will be something I will always remember." she said, it was about the night Grange-over-Sands was bombed.

It was not hard to get food because of the rationing in the country. She didn't really know whether they ever ran out of food because her mum did the shopping.

There were quite a lot of shops in the village and all of them were useful. There was sufficient food but more vegetables because people grew their own.

At the end of the war it was great! They had a party in the village hall and they were all happy and danced with joy.

By Annabelle Caton, Megan Lowery
Michael Usher

鈥楩or a six year old country child with only a three year old brother WW2 meant playmates! Muriel and Beatrice came in the first wave of evacuees to our quiet northern village. About the same age as myself they lived with Mr & Mrs George Nicholson next door but one. We had some good imaginative games together!
But this was the Phoney War 鈥� no bombs so they gravitated back to Salford. Brenda and Walter Lee replaced them on the night of the May 4th/5th, 1941 they and the Nicholsons joined us in our blacked-out living room lit dimly by an oil lamp. Grange-over-Sands was being showered with incendiary bombs. From our attic window we could see this inferno across the Kent Estuary. 鈥楯erry鈥� was trying to bomb Arnside viaduct and using Grange as a marker. He didn鈥檛 succeed. However, the Silverdale area got the dubious 鈥榩leasure鈥� of three jettisoned bombs. They didn鈥檛 score either! I believe that Barrow-in Furness
鈥淕ot it鈥� that night too.
Our 鈥榲accies鈥� were nicely brought up unlike many who came from the deprived areas of Salford, and later London. Lice, impetigo and scabies did the rounds on the village children. Our mothers were asked to donate spare clothing to foster parents for their often-ragged guests. Poor kids! Many had never seen a wood: they went round ripping bark and branches of trees! But I think they came to appreciate the countryside and us bumpkins. They came on nature walks on several occasions. These were hardly educational, more pharmaceutical, the object being the collection of seasonal plants like deadly nightshade and coltsfoot for their therapeutic value.
Around this time we had half-time education 鈥� mornings only one week, afternoons the next. Not very satisfactory and eventually the evacuees and their teachers set up school in the Parish Hall.
Early on in the war we were issued with gas masks 鈥榯o be carried at all times鈥�. We had regular air raid drills taking cover under desks and on two occasions were walked to a nearby field in which there was a depression.
In September 1944 I changed to Lancaster Girls鈥� Grammar School and travelled by train. All credit to the L.M.S. they did a splendid job keeping those trains going! They were often full of servicemen and we stood. Trains were delayed further south because of bomb damage but we always got home. It was on a train that a soldier told us that the war in Europe was over!
(My father failed his conscription medical: he had only one lung). On that momentous occasion he said, 鈥淏ut Doc and Maurice won鈥檛 be coming back!鈥� They were friends who had died and it is because of the likes of those servicemen that we must remember them!鈥�

Mrs Dorothy M. Clark.

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