大象传媒

I was 10 years old on the 6th August as war was declared on the 3rd of September 1939.
All children in East Manchester, where I lived, were to be evacuated to safer areas 鈥� some to Blackpool, others to Disley and other supposedly safer places. They all had labels with their names and carried gas masks.
As I was an only child my parents sent me to live with my mother鈥檚 brother and his wife at Cliviger near Burnley. They lived in a reception area and as they had no family and a spare bedroom they took me instead of a stranger.
I went to Todmorden Road Junior School, Burnley for one year, where I took my 11 plus examination and then went to Burnley High School for Girls.
Strangely enough the only bomb that fell in Burnley was on the school playing field and all the windows were blown in although the actual building was not damaged.
On the night when Manchester had its Blitz I looked through my bedroom window and saw a red glow in the sky. This was Manchester on fire. I did not know for two weeks whether my mother and grandfather were alive. My father was in the City Fire Brigade and had been posted to the Overseas Fire Fighting Service and sent to Kingsbridge in South Devon.
Many evacuees came to Burnley from London and arrived with tiny babies and small children who were very tired and hungry. My aunt and other ladies went to the reception hall to help feed them and find accommodation. People gave clothes and toys, as some had lost everything in the London Blitz.
We also have evacuees from the Channel Islands who had fled to England when the Germans invaded there.
I came back home to Manchester when I was 14 and transferred to Manchester Central High School, Whitworth Street where I was a pupil until the end of the war when I was 16. The atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on my 16th birthday 鈥� August 6th and my thought was 鈥淗ow dare they do that on my birthday!鈥�

I remember VJ day very well. There was a Band playing on top of the communal air raid shelter near George Street Park Openshaw. People were singing and dancing in the streets.
A few weeks later my father came home from Kingsbridge and I was united with him for the first time in four years!

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