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15 October 2014
WW2 - People's War

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Early Warning Dog: Manchester Blitzicon for Recommended story

by Thorner

Contributed by听
Thorner
People in story:听
Thorner
Location of story:听
Manchester
Article ID:听
A2450594
Contributed on:听
22 March 2004

I was 11 yrs old in 1939 when the war broke out. The things that I can remember that made an impression was the black-out, it was so dark no lights anywhere everyone had black-out curtains up at the windows and everyone had torches. Food was rationed and when any shop managed to get the food that was scarce the word would get round and there were long queues outside the shop, every where you went we seem to have to wait in a queue. I lived in Northenden Manchester the aeroplanes that came over always made for Trafford Park and Hulme and they were trying to find Ringway airport. We had to carry our gas masks everywhere and if the sirens went off when we were on our way to school we had to go to the nearest air-raid shelter. We had a dog called "Rough" that we always had to take with us into the shelter. After a while "Rough" learned to tell us when we were going to have an air-raid. He would start barking minutes before the sirens went off. The next morning after a night of air-raids you could see from our house where the German bombers had dropped their bombs over Trafford Park the sky would all be lit up. Thanks to "Rough" we always were first to get the warning however also thanks to "Rough" we were often last to the shelter because we couldn't get hold of him to bring him to safety.

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These messages were added to this story by site members between June 2003 and January 2006. It is no longer possible to leave messages here. Find out more about the site contributors.

Message 1 - Dogs barking

Posted on: 26 March 2004 by Bill Killick

Hi Thorner,that is a fact about the dogs barking,In London,Bermondsey,my mum used to say"listen the dogs are barking,get your stuff together and get down the shelter",and within a short space of time the air raid sirens used to sound and the raid was on.I think that the dogs hearing was so much better than ours,they could hear the bombers approaching long before we could,and it didnt take them long to associate the sound with the bombing that was coming.Cheers,Bill Killick...

Message 2 - Dogs barking

Posted on: 29 March 2004 by Thorner

Hi Bill. Many thanks for your reply to my "Early warning dog" story. It was very interesting to hear that your mother mentioned that all the dogs started barking as I can only remember one dog barking (Rough). I'm on an IT course and my tutor thought it would be good to have a go at doing a story for 大象传媒i so I was very pleased to get a response to my story. Thanks!

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This story has been placed in the following categories.

The Blitz Category
Childhood and Evacuation Category
Manchester Category
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