大象传媒

I did my training in 1939 in a house in Didsbury. We practised dropping from a 1st floor window and trained in first aid. We went to a fire station. We had to go into a gas chamber and count to ten before putting our gas masks on. The Lady Mayoress of the time trained with us.

I worked in the censors office which was in one of the big storrs in Manchester - Dobsons I think. I organised the fire fighting there with a stirrup pump.

We used to read letters from civilians to soldiers and if they said anything like a bomb exploded on an important part of the town, say the power station, we had to pass them to the head censorship officers. The letters had to be opened at one end and resealed with a label with our number to show that it had been censored. My number was 3791 or something like that.

One of the first jobs we had to do was go round fitting gas masks. The babies had special cots, like an incubator, and we had to show the mothers how to pump the air in. The gas masks were kept in a cardbord box carried over the shoulder. You didn't go anywhere without your gas mask!

We were issued with tin hats with ARP on and a navy blue overall. While I was in the censorship office the Germans started bombing Manchester. As the buildings were cottom mills and warehouses, the fibres used to catch light and spread fires. Before the sirens went we used to get the "yellow message" and then we had to put everything away in steel files.

Every night the sirens sounded the alert until at about half past six and I had to shepherd everyone into the air raid shelters until they sounded the all clear about half past six the next morning. The Germans started using doodle bugs and land mines. A land mine got stuck on a catholic church - I think it may have been in Oxford Road. It was a really harrowing time. You almost lived in a shelter - families were bombed out.

One time I was on duty for 3 days with nothing to eat - only an occasional cup of tea snatched from a mobile van. I was at a wardens post. My niece came and told the head warden I had been on duty for 3 days with nothing to eat. She go permission for me to go off duty and took me to her house. I remember she had got a little chicken

She gave me a leg - I could have eaten the bone!

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