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This story has bee submitted to the People’s War sight by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Margaret Hindle and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was nine when the war started and my parents had arranged for my sister and I to go to my Grandma’s sister in Toronto for the duration of the war.

We had to have medicals, injections and eye tests, I passed these but fortunately for us, although we didn’t know it at the time, my sister failed the eye test. This meant she couldn’t go, so that meant I didn’t go either.

We were due to have sailed on the S.S. Athenia which was was mistaken for an armoured cruiser by a U boat off the coast of Ireland and sunk on the 3rd of September 1939 with 1103 civilian passengers on board, including 300 Americans hurrying home before the onset of war. Luckily being close to the coast most of the passengers were rescued but 112 died either by drowning or from injuries as a result of the explosion.

So we stayed in Colne for the duration of the war. I remember going down into the cellar when the siren went off, I remember gas masks and my sister Audrey having a Mickey Mouse one and of course the rationing, although I must say we didn’t seem to go short of very much. Looking back now I realise just how very lucky my sister was failing her eye test, had it been otherwise, I might not be here to tell this story.

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