大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Edwina Davies on behalf of Mr Cyril Barker and his family, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

Used to the testing of the sirens we gradually started to ignore them but then when the bombing started in spring, 1942, we learnt to take notice and heed them. An awful lot of the houses in Barrow were damaged or destroyed.
One night the Germans had decided they would not bomb us any more, they'd drop land mines. If you've ever seen one you'd think they were very strange. You'd think they were dropping parachutists in and suddenly there'd be a tremendous bang and flash, like a big flash of lightening and you'd end up with a thirty to forty foot wide hole and very deep, and everything around it demolished with the beast. They dropped quite a few of these on the town.
We were in the air raid shelter one night and there was a terrific bang and a tremendous bump and thud on top of the shelter. We thought a bomb had dropped. I asked if I should take a look but my mother stopped me. Eventually we plucked up courage to have a look out. A massive boulder, about two foot square had landed on the roof and the end tin sheets which stuck out, and bear in mind they were made of galvanised steel and thick and although they were strong, had been bent right over. We were very relieved it wasn't a bomb.
However, it was very short lived that pleasure, that feeling of relief because an air raid warden came and said "You have to be evacuated because there are unexploded bombs."
Then we saw where the land mine had dropped and caused such a noise and given us such a scare. It had fallen about six to seven hundred yards away.
We all had to go to the school, Sacred Heart, while they looked for the unexploded bombs.
They were very good, kind. We were given tea and biscuits, not much else, and a blanket to sleep on the floor but we got by. Anyway, fortunately when night time came the next night we could go back to our beds for a short time until the air raid sirens went off again.
On one of the bombing sessions they dropped quite a few bombs on Barrow. I remember this hotel, The Trevelyan, and there was a little shelf where a bath was up on the wall and on another wall there was just a bed and the rest was down.
Unfortunately that night my sister, husband and baby were killed just a few streets away from these.
That was a sad time. So me mother decided that it was time we had a move. So we evacuated to Askham, three miles away. My grandmother lived at Askham. My sister lived with us at the time and she had a little baby and she dashed off on the bus but she could not manage at Askham without the pram. So I rode my bike from Barrow to Askham pulling this pram behind me, which was very useful when we got it there but a bit of a pain taking it.
When the bombs were dropping people were going out towards Dalton and sleeping under the hedges. You could see a stream of people walking out of town every night. It must have been serious, really tough, walking out at night, sleeping rough and having to walk back to town in the morning to go to work. However, they did it.

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