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This story has been submitted to The People’s War Website by Margaret Payne of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of John Clough and has been added to the site with his permission.

When I was four year’s old and had just started school (Claremont Infant School, Blackpool) I remember the school yard being dug up to make way for air-raid shelters. A trench was dug in the ground, concrete arches put over the top and the earth put back on top of the arches. There was a concrete slab to sit on — we all had a felt mat! There was a primitive toilet — a bucket at one end of the shelter and a sort of hatch above in case the doorway was blocked to enable us to get out. I remember having to do air-raid practise once a week.

The school was on shift work for a time. Evacuees would come to our school from the Liverpool area. One week they were in school for a lesson 08.00-12.00pm and then our school did 12.00pm-4.00pm and the next week it was the other way round.

Some of the evacuees were from very poor families and had been sown in their clothes!! My two maiden aunts who lived nearby took three evacuee girls into their home and literally removed their clothes and burnt them. The children were bathed in dettol and came out of the hot water bright pink! Their mother, who visited, wasn’t very pleased. In later adult life, one of those girls came back regularly, and visited my aunts because she said the experience had taught her how life could be lived. These two maiden aunts were very precise in their lifestyle, but they were very jolly, caring, happy ladies.

On the Cenotaph at Blackpool, you will note that there is only one woman’s name by those mentioned who lost their lives in the First World War 1914-18. That lady was my great aunt. I had her nurse’s real silver buckle, which had formed part of her uniform, made into a brooch. I gave that brooch to my daughter, who is now a doctor, so it still ‘walks the wards’.

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