大象传媒

In 1939 I was 9 year old going on 10 and I lived with my family in Old Trafford Manchester in a large house on Chester Road near City Road junction. My father was a business man and a veteran of WW1 in the Lancashire Fusiliers. Mother and three sisters also lived in the house and we led a comfortable suburban life. I attended Seymour Park infants school.

September 1939 was a big day in my life since I heard on the radio that we were, according to Neville Chamberlain, at war. The radio was a huge affair with many buttons for station changing and I distinctly remember some of the popular tunes and songs that were interrupted to make the awful anouncement.

Occasionally I hear some of the tunes of those days and they bring back many memories, like "A-Tisket-a-Tasket and Red sails in the Sunset. Even after 63 years those memories still haunt.

Amost immediately the whole primary school was evacuated to Hale in Cheshire. In those days Hale was considered the "country". The classes were marched onto buses acompanied by our Mother"s tears and we were issued with a gas mask, a bar of Cadbury's chocolate and a tin of condensed milk.

On arrival in Hale we were herded into a community hall and a large number of local residents came to pick out who they wanted to take as refugees. I was picked, along with my younger sister Margaret and also a pal of mine and his sister to go to a house only just around the corner. Mrs Hough was a big jolly woman with two daughters of her own and they lived in a big three storey house on the main Hale highway with a large garden out back. After settling in we attended a local primary school sharing half days with the local kids.

The war hardly impacted on us at all and because nothing much happened from September to August the following year, our parents decided to get us back home. In some ways we were sorry to leave since our foster parents looked after us very well although it was not the same as being at home.

Back in Old Trafford life was back to normal for a while and I remember seeing from Longford Park Stretford all the vapour trails in the sky as some of the Battle of Britain spilled over into the North.Barrage balloons were the norm, one being based in Hullard Park nearby.

I passed a scholarship in 1940 and started at Stretford Grammar School which I thought was wonderful, learning French and physics etc. It didn't last very long though, because the Lufwaffe had plans for us and our peaceful existence was soon to be shattered. This is the subject of another article soon.

When the soldiers came back from the defeat of Dunkirk,a few hundred of them were shipped straight to Manchester and were billeted in a billiard hall on Stretford Road just around the corner. They had been soaked in seawater and it had dried on their clothes leaving big white patches of salt. They were reasonably cheerful and still had their weapons and boots but the boots were ruined and were thrown on a big pile for disposal. We kids hung around hoping to get souvenirs but there wasn't much going, the odd bullet or tin hat was all. Lucky for us as they were all that prevented the Nazis landing in England.

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