大象传媒

I was born just two years before WW2 began so I don't have many recollections from the actual start of the war. My earliest memories however begin from when I was just over three years old. It was, I believe, sometime in the early 1940's, that the first bombs were dropped on the small Lancashire town of Darwen, the town where I was born in the summer of 1937.

Thoughts stay in my mind from that Monday in autumn of that year, and although I was so young at that time, these recollections have always stayed with me.

The Monday morning began as normal, with Dad and myself walking with a hand truck into Darwen town centre, it was something we always did on every Monday. Dad kept a hen pen/allotment on a site near to Rosehill Street. So our Monday journeys were always to stock up hen food which we got from the wholesalers somewhere near the railway station.

Dad and I were making our way homewards towards the hen pens, when we met Aunt Polly at the corner of Crown Street. After chatting for a short while, we continued up the hill for about half a mile. About thirty minutes later, ( I think I was told later it was just after 10 o'clock),I was with Dad and other hen pen owners. They were busy chatting amongst themselves when a shout from one of the men caused us all to look into the sky. Although at that early age, I remember looking up to see Dad and the others watching a plane coming over us from the west, then turning to head towards the town centre. Within minutes, I saw the bombs drop from the plane (I would certainly have heard the blast, but I don't remember). What I recall next was a cloud of smoke and dust rising to the sky. The aircraft then came back towards us, and began firing its machine guns. At this I can remember that Dad hid me behind his back some of the men running a cabin nearby. Dad and a few others stayed quite still, and watched the plane head eastwards.

Later, I recall being told that the plane had fired at a bus that was going up Marsh House Lane, and breaking the windows. Later that day we learned that Aunt Polly had been killed when the bombs we had seen at hit her house on Spring Street. I also remember Dad and I being stopped by a policeman when we tried to make our way to the scene.

About the same month in 1940, I can recall going to my grandmothers, who lived in the top house in Bury Street. All her front windows had been blown out and mum helped to clear all the glass from her bed which was next to the window. I was later to learn that the bombs dropped on this occasion had landed somewhere near to the Model Lodging House which was just across the road.

I have other vague memories from those early forties, such as the air -raid shelter that was in our Street (Mary Street). I never remember it being used for anything but storing bonfire wood though. Taking gas masks to school, and learning to put them on was another memory. Soldiers with all their kit, resting on the roadside near to where I lived. Uncles coming home on leave visited us from time to time, and maybe they left a piece of the war (like a bullet case) as a momento. I do recall the "blackout" and how I would lie in bed, pull up the blinds, and watch the flashes in the sky along with the searchlights that were in actions over the Manchester area, some 20 miles to the South.
Sad times, happy times - but some great memories!

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