大象传媒

As an 8 year old boy on holiday in North Wales with my parents and grandparents during the week running up to the outbreak of the second world war we had been watching the attempted recovery of the submarine Thetis off Anglesea, which to me seeing all the ships was quite exciting.
My grandfather said 鈥淚f Hitler invaded Poland we would have to go home鈥�. So it was on September 2nd we caught the train back to Manchester.
At Chester however all the passengers had to get off and the train was commandeered for hundreds of Territorial Army soldiers waiting on the platform.
When we did finally arrive back home in Timperley near Altricham in Cheshire we were met by a crocodile of evacuee children from the East End of London, one of which, a little girl, was billeted on us for two years.
One evening, during the Blitz on Manchester, my father and I stood at our front gate watching the sky all lit up by the fires over Manchester when a very loud bang went off a lot nearer home and sometime later it started to 鈥渟now鈥�. Except, it wasn鈥檛 snow, but sweet wrappers, as a bomb had hit Longs Toffee Works in nearby Broadheath and scattered the wrappers to the wind.

A Great Uncle, a farmer, way out in what was then the countryside at Bagley looked out of his shelter in the garden and saw two parachutes descending, so he ran to the house for his shotgun and was killed when a landmine hit the house. He was the only member of our family to be killed during the war.

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