大象传媒

This story gathered by Gloria Davies has been added to the People鈥檚 War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Edmund Davies, the story is in his own words.

The Davies family lived on an estate of Corporation houses at Higher Blackley, North Manchester, my father William George, my mother Gertrude, my sister Eiralys Gertrude, my brother Bryn John, and myself Edmund William. My father was police constable 129 in the Manchester B Division, my sister worked in the C.W.S. Biscuit Works, Crumpsall, and my brother was a babe-in-arms. I attended North Manchester High School, Moston. The war meant dried egg, dried milk, and Spam on the table, and waxed-fruit in the bowl on the sideboard; it meant an air-raid shelter in the back garden and brown paper strips on the windows to stop flying glass and it meant the black-out at night with Air Raid Wardens shouting 'Put that light out!'

On the night of the 10th of January, 1941, the air-raid sirens sounded. We didn't go into the shelter in the garden, it was flooded with water about six inches deep, besides we had got out of the habit of using it, familiarity had bred contempt. We could hear the pulsating drone of the Luftwaffe bombers overhead and presumably searchlights searched the sky, though we didn't go out to see. I was doing a jig-saw puzzle on the dining table, and my mother, sister, and brother were in the same room. It was early evening and my father was out on night-duty. I put a piece in and then experienced a crushing blackness. When I regained consciousness my mouth was full of dust and my left arm trapped in a raised position by a block of concrete. Another huge block formed a kind of sloping roof over my head, pressing against it. I heard men's voices and I knew they were going to get me out, so I felt no fear. But I could hear my brother crying to my left so I began shouting to tell the men that, and I remember thinking that they might think I was shouting because I was afraid, but I didn't care, I wanted them to get my brother out. But when they finally got me out the crying had stopped and my father was there. He had heard my shouting.

In Booth Hall Hospital I kept asking about my mother, sister, and brother, but no one seemed to know anything. Finally, my father told me they had all died. I remember him crying with me.

I was thirteen then, now l am seventy-seven, and two months ago, on 8th May, 2005, the 60~. Anniversary of VE Day, a tree made of copper, steel, and bronze was unveiled in Piccadilly Gardens in the centre of Manchester recognising the sacrifice of 700 or so people who lost their lives in the wartime bombing of Manchester. My mother, sister, and brother's names are engraved with all the others on copper plates which encircle the tree's.trunk. My wife, daughter, and son went with me to view the tree and take photographs of the names. For me it was so warming and touching to know that someone else in the world, other than my own family and right out of the blue, knew and had recognised the sacrifice of my lost loved ones, and of all those others.

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