大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Elizabeth Perez of Stockport Libraries on behalf of Jean Daniel and has been added to the site with her permission. She fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

When war started in 1939, I was 9 years old. I lived in Northenden, which is now called Wythenshaw, on a small estate called The Spinney, which came between Benchill and Royal Oak, where I went to school, until I went to Chorlton Central School at the age of eleven. At one end of Parkbrook Road where I lived, it was a dead end and fenced off, because people used it for allotments, a patch of ground where they grew their own vegetables.

On the railway line at the back of our house was a gun, which went up and down the railway to protect Ringway Airport. There were big beams of light called searchlights. Many a time they lit up the German aircraft coming over to bomb the Airport and the city of Manchester. We used to watch them practise parachute jumping. There were soldiers on sentry duty all around the area. At night when the Germans came over in their aircraft, the engines had a certain sound so we could tell when they were overhead, otherwise the searchlights would pick them out in their beams. Also we had barrage balloons on long wires to stop the planes coming too low.

At night we sometimes went down about nine times, when the siren went, to the shelter in the garden, which had a concrete base covered with corrugated iron, and soil and grass on top. The shelter quite often had water in it. Sometimes we kept in bed and hoped for the best. We had mattresses on the floor, where we slept every night, and we also had Kay, a young housewife from next door, sleep with us as her husband was on warden duty at night.

Air raid wardens were people who patrolled the streets at night looking for any lights showing, then they would shout 鈥淧ut that light out!鈥� The streetlights only showed a little light shining downwards, otherwise everywhere was in total darkness. Mother and Father had a big bay window in the lounge, so as well as all the blackout curtains we had sticky gum paper going across each window to stop them from shattering.
Also the wardens were on the look-out for incendiary bombs or mines, which floated down by parachute. My Auntie Elsie had to go and put out an incendiary bomb that had landed on Grandma鈥檚 roof in Brooks Bar, Whalley Range. Grandmother had a table shelter in her middle room. People were killed in the church on the corner.

I always remember the first bomb dropping, it whistled on its way down, everybody thought it was for them. On our way to school we were told to go into anybody鈥檚 garden if the sirens went, but we would stand and watch dog fights in the sky in the daytime between spit fires and messerschmitts.

Eventually they split the classes into two, I went to different pupil鈥檚 houses in the mornings and had afternoons free in our homes to continue with homework.
In those school days we sang with the Halle Orchestra, all the schools together.

Outside my home on the main Altrincham Road, my schoolfriend Pamela was pushing me in a box on wheels, when a battalion of Czech soldiers fell out for a rest on the grass verge. They were very friendly, and one took over from Pamela and started pushing me along the path.

Our neighbour from next door, Kay鈥檚 husband, made a long box with holes in it as an air raid shelter for their dog, and asked Kay to get into it to see if she could breathe in it.

I was ten years old and loved looking after younger children. Mother had a neighbour three doors away Tina, she had a little girl of three Jacalyn and a baby called Brian. I sometimes slept at her house. She used to give me clothes the baby grew out off for my doll. Tina鈥檚 husband Eric was a naturalised German, so he was confined to living where he worked at Fairey Aviation Co., as his parents still lived in Berlin. The night of the Manchester Blitz, I was sleeping at Tina鈥檚, and it finished up with me holding baby Brian while Tina had Jacalyn in her arms, while we sidled along the bunk bed in the air raid shelter. There was water in the bottom of the air raid shelter and we had no lights, as we weren鈥檛 allowed to light any. So that鈥檚 how we spent the night, while the planes were overhead bombing the Airport and Manchester.

In the back garden Father kept hens. They started off as little chickens in a box in Mother鈥檚 lounge, and finished up fenced off in the garden. Father had to kill the hens himself so we had a chicken for Christmas. We had one that seemed tame, we called her Molly. Unfortunately she had to go, but my father didn鈥檛 mention it till after Christmas.

My Father got a hand cart, painted it and put a ladder, bucket and stirrup pump on it for fire fighting for our road. Father had to go into bombed buildings to cut off the electricity as he was an electricity inspector.

Two friends, who lived next door to me in the war, and myself decided to make 鈥渓ittle gollies鈥� with wool, put pins in them and sell them one penny each. We made eleven shillings and sent it to 鈥淢rs Churchill鈥檚 Aid to Russia Fund鈥�. We had a nice thank you letter from her. In school we knitted sea boot socks made of oilwool for the sailors and Balaclava helmets for the soldiers.

My Uncle Norman was a young officer in the First World War and a Captain in the Second. Whenever we walked with him when he was home on leave, everybody in uniform kept saluting him. Towards the end of the war, he was in command of the German Prisoner of War Camp Lishalley in Londonderry, Northern Ireland and the German Prisoners asked him if they could give a party of the British children, to which he agreed. One made him a brass German U-boat on a plaque, which I now have, and a picture of the German U-boats surrendering.

I was fifteen when war finished and I had started work in the office at Metro鈥檚 Longford Park. One time cycling home in the fog, I lost my way and had to ask a group of Italian Prisoners of War, who were working on the roads, the way back to Chorlton (what a laugh!).

The time I appreciated most was when the lights went on again all over the world.
Parkbrook Road and The Spinney had our victory party at the cafeteria in Wyhthenshawe Hall and games in the park afterwards which was a great success.

My sister worked for Brookes Biscuit Co. Two years after war had finished, some of the girls and myself, who was included because of my sister, went by coach to Toft Hall Knutsford to an army camp dance to partner soldiers who had been in Prisoner of War Camps. Young men who were only young, but looked forty or fifty scarred by their memories. Anyway it was a great success.

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