大象传媒

Manchester Blitz

Emily Carpenter is 90 years old. This is her story of how lives where changed on the night of the 22 December 1940.

It was the Sunday before Christmas and I had returned from church at about 4.30 pm, as the sirens began to sound. I went into our house in Duke Street, Old Trafford, Manchester to change into old clothes suitable for sitting in our air raid shelter. I lived with my father, and my brother Jack. My other brother, Bill, was away in the army.

The incendiaries were already falling as I went into the shelter. My father was out on duty as an air raid warden and my brother Jack had taken Hilda, the girl next door, out into Manchester.

I was alone in the shelter as the bombs began to fall. My father returned to our house to try to put out a fire. I was happy when Jim - a friend from the next street - arrived to take me to his shelter.

I was in this shelter with Jim鈥檚 mother and sister as the bombs rained down. The door of the shelter caved in cutting my legs. An air raid warden arrived and told us to leave the shelter immediately. We were encircled in flames like a scene from Dantes inferno. We stumbled through the chaos of smoke and debris to reach another shelter in Oxford Street where we waited until daybreak.

The morning revealed a sight of devastation; a land mine had hit our house leaving a huge crater. My brother returned with Hilda, they had sheltered in Manchester all night and walked home through the rubble. Hilda's mother, father, brother and his wife had all died. They had remained in the shelter next to ours.

We were homeless for the next year.

I married Jim and my brother married Hilda.

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