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Interview with Ada Kerwin, born 1925. 3 May 2005 at Swinton Hall Nursing Home.

I was 14 at the outbreak of war and I remember the broadcast that we were now at war. I worked during the war. I worked at a mill, then at a boxworks and then as a matron’s maid at a nursing home for quite a few years.

I lived at 7 Nelson St, Weaste and our house was bombed. It was my birthday and we were waiting for friends of mine coming and the sirens went and we stayed in the house waiting for her coming. When it started getting bad we couldn’t go down to the shelter in the street so I went under the stairs with my mother. I was more terrified in the cupboard because we had beetles, we had lots of them and I was more frightened of them than of the bombs. Anyhow we stayed there nearly all night… but when we tried to get out, the side of the house had been blown down and it trapped us in. So when we tried to get out the ARP men came round and it was boards that had fallen across the door. They got us out but when we looked out the entire table that was set for the party had gone, the wall had fallen on it and at the back, and the whole street had gone. It was a landmine or something and our milk boy Jimmy Fitzgerald he’d been killed.
We were put in a church to try to get the house built up but we couldn’t get it repaired so we went to live in a house in Newall St. This happened on 23 December 1939
I used to go out and collect shrapnel with a shoe box. I kept that for a while.

Mother was cook in the Crescent Nursing Home in Salford 5. That was the home where I worked.
I had a brother in the army and a brother in the airforce. The first was in the regular army and he was on furlough (leave) when war broke out and he went back to the barracks on Cross Lane. He got married while he was in the army and he was at Dunkirk and all over — Singapore and Hong Kong. We used to write letters for my mother because she couldn’t write. We got very few letters from him. He was killed at Carnes in France. He was married and left a little boy and a baby girl. He was Bill Kerwin. My other brother was in the airforce in Egypt.

It was terrible the noise of it, the whistling of it coming down.

Down our street there was a big shelter at the bottom. In Newall St at the bottom were the flats and on the front of the flats there was an underground shelter. You felt safe there. We went there all the time. We didn’t stay in the house again, no, we had experienced it once, and we didn’t stay in again. If you went down to the shelter you took a blanket and a pillow. The shelters were quite nice and clean, musty but clean. You could be in them all night. Everybody was friendly. You had sing songs and all that. Quite a happy atmosphere at times until you heard the whistle…People would try to guess where it was going to hit. I wouldn’t like to go through it again. At times if there was a lull in the bombing the ARP men used to come with jugs of cocoa, hot cocoa. We were well looked after by the ARP men.

We made black out curtains and put them up and some people stuck paper on the windows, like cellophane paper because if the glass broke you wouldn’t get cut if you stayed in. It was foolish to stay in but we were waiting for my friends coming.
What happened to your friends?
They were sensible. They took the shelter. They weren’t like us.

My mother managed with the rations. She managed to make a meal out of anything.
One time she went into the butchers. You were only allowed so much and she saw this big piece of beef on the counter. She asked how many coupons he needed for some and he said she could have some if she wanted. It was horse meat. My mother got some and do you know it was lovely. My mother cooked it and we had a roast and it was lovely. We had many meals made out of all sorts.

My father was killed when I was 4.

You had to be careful with your clothes because you only got so many coupons. You had to be careful with your clothes. I could get shoes quite easily my size because the bigger the size the more the coupons and I was only 2 and I could get a child’s shoe.

We went to the pictures and the sirens would go whilst we were in the pictures but the pictures carried on and you didn’t hear it as much. You’d perhaps hear a bump but you didn’t hear it. People didn’t leave before the end of the picture. It perhaps came up on the screen that there was an air raid on. Then you would come out and see the results. There were fires from the incendiary bombs.

Mostly the warehouses and factories were hit. The hospital was hit. Hope Hospital. Dr Giles and Matron Ross were killed. There is a mosaic commemorating it at Hope Hospital. A few nurses were killed.

At the end of the war there was a big celebration. All the tables were out in the street and where the food came from I could not tell you, but it did, it appeared. We were in Newall St. All the decorations were put out and everybody was out singing and dancing. It was grand.

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