大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Jake, a pupil from Teversham Primary School on behalf of William Lee Bowden and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr Bowden fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I lived with my father who worked for a company in Stockport and my mother who owned a grocery/off licence shop. Because we lived eight miles from Manchester instead of a shelter we had a steel table. When the air raid sirens went off we hid under the table. We lived near a river; German bombers could see the moon reflecting off it and followed it to Manchester. Every now and again a scared German bomber would come back up the river and drop its bombs here.

My father was an A.R.P. warden, they looked out for aeroplanes. The first plane was a pathfinder. It would drop magnesium flares for the others to follow. One night my father was putting out the flares but had nothing to put them out with so he used his tin hat, it burnt out the inside of it. As a child I had patches on my trousers and a ration book. Tins of Spam, dried egg and no bananas and oranges. Instead of sweets for school I had doctor Thompson鈥檚 cough pastels. When I went to school I had a gas mask in a little brown box. I remember one Christmas Eve I was delivering with my father when his lorry broke down; he left me with it while he found a telephone. On his way he met a policeman, he asked if he would go and look after me. I remember being so worried waiting for my dad and the relief when the policeman came. The only other thing is that my cousin was in the navy and he got torpedoed twice.

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