大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Mrs E I Phillips and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms nad conditions.

The night of the 18th December, 1941 - a cold dark night but we were holding a party for my eldest sister who was 21. The house was quite full and alive with our guests including several British soldiers.
After a while the sirens started to wail - another air raid but how were we to know that this owuld be qa noght to remember so well?
We all continued to enjoy ourselves, completely ignoring the threat, as weusually did. The exception was one of our male guests who was shaken in fact terrified. He then explained that he'd been involved in combat with the German Army in Norway and went on to describe the horrors bombing could create, rebuking out attitudes to such danger as frivolous and unthinking. He was, of course, right to warn us as later a land mine was dropped approximately 200 yards away from our house completely demolishing a shop and two houses, which, fortunately were unoccupied at the time. The after blast force then blew all the windows out of our house and the infrastructure imploded, cutting off all the supplies - water, electricity - leaving us in total darkness. To add to the discomfort, soot blew down the chimneys completely coating our guests and ourselves. We all laughed because my mother, whose grey hair was covered in soot looked 20 years younger!!

The next morning after very little sleep and without so much as a drop of water to drink, we all proceeded to work. I remember walking four miles into Manchester City where I worked, through glass, rubble, water, etc. I got to work to find my boss disconsolately trying to type with only one finger - he turned to me with the words "Where the hell have you been?" When I explained all that had happened he made light of it and stalked off to his office with full dignity leaving me to "get on with it"!

I crept gratefully in to the Ladies Room and washed off some of the grime, surreptitiously made several cups of tea and then proceeded to de a full day's work!

Later on when the GI's arrived and Manchetser became known as "Manchester USA", things became fractionally more tolerable. With their advent came such luxuries as silk stockings, cigarettes, cake, chocolate and even very occasionally oranges oranges hadnot been seen for about 5 years!
I have three sisters so every now and then a GI would be invited to our house - bringing with them these very welcome luxuries. They all loved my mother who made them welcome and tried to amke them feel at home they really appreciated it. They called my dad "Pops" which infuriated him. He was a very dignified man who looked a nd behaved a lot like Winston Churchill - he expected to be addressed as "Sir" all the time which was not understood by these lads!

One night, when there was a particularly lenghty raid. my mother made us all stand the whoile night in the hallway. A narrow and wuite long panelled passage where we all stood miserably all night - with the exception of dad. He consumed a whole bottle of Johnny Walker, slept without any apparent discomfort all night. We knew he had slept well because his snores reverberated through the whole house all night!

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