大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Jean Holmes of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Marjorie Openshaw and added to the site with her permission.
I was 10 years old the day war broke out. I was playing with my dolls pram and I had to put on a clean apron and listen to the dreadful news.

I remember a lone German bomber came over the fields by Lostock Hall and jettisoned a bomb. The plane was painted blue.

My father had to work an 80 hour week in Munitions. I remember my mother was always very anxious. Transport was difficult. My grandfather lived with us, suffering from what we would now call Alzheimers, demanding things which could not be bought. I would spend school holidays and weekends queuing for tit-bits at the shops to help eke out the rations.

I used to read by torchlight under the bedclothes, but one night the warden saw a chink of light and I got into a lot of trouble. It was a very serious matter.

We took in a Manchester evacuee called Billy. He had two sisters next door. They all looked frail and badly nourished. His mother and baby brother were in Preston. Then his father came back from the army and took them all back to Manchester. We never heard from them again.

At Christmas in 1944 I went with my parents to the Tottington Methodist church social. We walked home by the light of a beautiful moon. Later that night the sirens went. Our neighbour came knocking at our door, clutching her bankbook. We heard a doodle bug cut out. We had been told to count to 15 for the bang. It destroyed a row of cottages in Tottington, where there is a memorial garden now.

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