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This story was submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Jane Ellen Guest and was added to the site with her permission…

I was seven when the war started. My mother was a weaver working in the mill and my great Grandma and two great Aunts looked after my brother Walter and I.

We lived in Darwen in Lancashire and only one bomb dropped there; I think they were possibly aiming for the Railway Station. At school we used to have gas mask practice, when we had to put them on, then someone would blow a whistle and we would all run into the air raid shelters in the playground. I remember we used to blow into the masks and make rude noises, which of course we thought to be very funny. I can’t remember a lot about the shelters except that they were very dark inside.

We had ration books for almost everything and we used to go and get our ration of sweets every Friday. The air raid warden came round at night making sure we didn’t have a chink of light showing anywhere.

My father had gone into the army as a Non Commissioned Officer, he went through Europe and then to Egypt where he fought in the desert with the Desert Rats, I am happy to say he came home safely when the war was over.

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