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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by RICHARD FIELD on behalf of ALAN and MARGARET HIBBERT and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

By Alan and Margaret Hibbert
(as related to Richard Field)

Alan and Margaret Hibbert first met when they were pupils at school at Ashton Under Lyne Grammar School during the war. They were both 14 at the time.
Miss Moss was their geography teacher and she wasn’t all that enamoured by the idea of a budding romance. This is not a matrimonial agency, she scalded them. When in 1951 they married, Miss Moss sent them a tea towel.
Now, after more than 50 years together, Alan and Margaret look back to the war years as a time of excitement, some fear and yet quite a lot of joy.
Magaret: I remember in 1940 I was walking to school for the first time, weighed down with a satchel full of books (which my parents had had to buy), when the sirens sounded and I had to run there. At school we were hastily ushered into re-enforced cloakrooms which were what went for an air raid shelter. It was all very chaotic. Nobody knew what was happening. It was quite an eventful start to my schooldays.
Alan: I had started school a year earlier, so I may have been in that same room when Margaret first arrived. But, of course, we did not know each other then.
Margaret: I remember we had a motley collection of teachers. All the young men had gone off to the war, and the school had to call back a lot of retired ones. I particularly remember Miss Smaile. I think she must have been in her seventies.
Even earlier than that, I remember the day war was declared. I was coming out of Sunday School when we were told the news. I was frightened but I didn’t know of what.
After that I remember father would never let me join the brownies or the guides. He didn’t approve of uniformed organisations. I think he associated them with what he’d heard happening at the Nurnberg youth rallies.
Alan: I remember hearing Neville Chamberlain speaking on the wireless. Father had been in the first war and had been with Allenby’s force going in to Palestine. To him that all that seemed so recent. It was awful to think we were starting all that again, he said.
Margaret: Quite soon we were hearing of people being killed. I remember the announcement at school that Peter Fellows, a former head boy, had been shot down and killed. It didn’t seem five minutes since he was at school. I think I’d had a bit of a crush on him!
Dad was a printer and worked for Williamsons, who printed tickets. He was over age so didn’t get called up, but he did join the first aid party and wore a tin hat with FAP on it.
At home, just before war broke out, my sister, Joan was born. I remember she got issued with an infant’s respirator. It was a funny looking thing, a bit like a tray with a cover over it and a window so you could see the baby through it. You had to pump air into it.
Alan: I remember quite a funny incident when gas masks were being issued. They went to take one to my aunt, who lived in Taunton, near Daisy Nook, where a lot of the people talked only dialect.
When they tried to fit her with one she replied; ‘There’s nowt wrong wi ma gas, and tha doesna need to goo next door cause she’s getten lectric lite’
I remember they used to collect aluminium to raise money to build more Spitfires. There was a marker outside the Town Hall which showed how far we’d got.
Margaret: The rationing meant we had to be very careful not to waste anything. Nothing ever got throw away. I still hate waste.
Even today I remember I was always hungry. One of the few things not rationed was syrup, so we used that instead of sugar. We used to get tins of sausage meat which had a layer of fat on the top; this was useful for making pastry. We used to mix margarine with a little butter to make it more palatable. We ate toast and used beef dripping instead of butter.
I remember the Dig for Victory posters. At home we dug up our lawn and planted vegetables. The school playing field was also planted with potatoes.
We lived quite near to Manchester, and when the bombing started there, Mum and Dad decided they needed to have a shelter. The best they could do was to try and re-enforce the pantry under the stairs. I don’t think that would really have saved us if there had been a direct hit.
After one particularly bad raid on Manchester, my mum decided she had to go to Pendleton to see if an old auntie who lived there was all right. She managed to get a bus into Manchester but had to walk the rest of the way to Pendleton because there were no more buses running. In the city I was surrounded by smouldering buildings, the road were shut and there were hose pipes everywhere. Auntie had had all her windows blown out but was otherwise all right.
I think the event which made the biggest impact on me was hearing about D-Day. The reports on the wireless were very censored, but we still got a very good idea of what had happened.
I remember at the local Ladysmith Barracks we saw lots of soldiers coming back from Dunkirk. A lot were injured and many had tattered uniforms.
Alan: I remember before D-Day they requisitioned a pleasure boat from our local park. It only sat about 20 people. One day it was taken away on a transporter, and presumably played some part in that operation. Later the boat was returned and refurbished.
At this time my Dad ran a newsagent’s cum tobacconist cum sweetshop. Seeing so many sweets might have been a dream come true for some lads, but they didn’t really tempt me too much. I helped Dad cut out and count the sweet coupons. That was a very tedious job.
I was a stand-in paper boy, and in the winter I used to go on my rounds just with a tiny torch, squinting to try and find the right houses. There were, of course, no street lights, so everywhere was completely black. My great hobby at the time was collecting bits of shrapnel.
Mararet: Yes, I do remember the end of the war. I was still at school and remember seeing people dancing in the streets.
A bit later the street lights came back on. I recall peeping through the curtains and seeing them. They looked so bright, a bit like Blackpool Illuminations!
I was so excited I woke up my sister, Joan, who was four or five at the time.
But the end of the war didn’t mean any sudden change back to normality. I remember when I married Alan in 1951 there was still rationing and my Mum had to save coupons for a long time to get my wedding dress.

END

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