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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Veronica Parker and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was only three when the war started so I don’t have a lot of memories. I lived in Manchester and just before Christmas 1940 it was blitzed, so I went to stay with an Uncle in Droylsden, south of Manchester.

My father was a draughtsman, working on aircraft plans, so he was I a reserved occupation, mother just kept house. Grandma lived with us and I remember her plucking and cleaning a chicken for our Christmas dinner one year, she was doing it on the polished top of the dining table, something you would never see today.

As to the sweet rationing I can recall this little boy in the shop where we went who seemed to have a talent for reckoning up the points for sweets before you could. Father would go to the same shop for our ration and would share them out meticulously as well as putting a bit by for extra treats at Christmas.

I remember when a raid was on having to sleep under the stairs and mum sleeping under the table in the living room. There was a shelter in the park nearby, a land mine landed near to it and everyone who was in it was sadly killed, so maybe you were safer in your own home. They used to clean out the land mines and people would throw odd coppers in to them to be collected to help the war effort.

I was nine on VE Day and was allowed to go to the celebratory bonfire in Clayton.

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