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This story has been added to the People's War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home guard on behalf of Margaret Pickup, the story is in her own words...

In 1939, when the Second World War started, I was only 4 years old, so my earliest memories of there being a war on, was when I was about 6, In 1941,and attending St.Paul’s School, at the end of Blakey Moor, where the Art Department of Blackburn College now stands. The Infant section was downstairs and the junior upstairs and a big trapdoor in the floor of one of the Infant classrooms gave access to the cellar. When the Siren sounded an Air Raid warning, we all went down steps into the cellar, class by class, then the trapdoor was closed. Rows of little benches were set out in the cellar, with chairs for the teachers and an easel set up in front, on which was hanging a large book of song sheets. The headmistress turned a page to the first song and tapped along the lines of music and words on the sheet in time to the music, with the end of a cane. The end of the cane could also be used to tap any child who misbehaved. It was very difficult to sing as we were all wearing gasmasks, so we couldn’t hear anyone else singing and after a few minutes as the goggles of the gas-mask misted up, so the child was unable to see the words on the song sheet. Luckily, we knew most of the words of the songs anyway.

My mother had a little grocer's shop on Blakey Moor and we lived above and behind the shop. Some people made a lot of money during the war,but my mother and father bought the shop in 1939, just before the outbreak of war, the previous owner had been ill for months, so the shop had been closed. Food shops had registered customers, so my mother was only able to register customers who were not registered with another shop, which meant she did not have so many, which not only meant less income, but also that she had not enough to claim petrol allowance so we couldn’t have a car or van. Deliveries were done on foot, or by my father, when he was at home, on an ancient bicycle. A lot of food was rationed and every person had a Ration Book, but there were many other restrictions. For instance the shop could only have 2 tins of fruit a year, per registered customer. The allowance could not be obtained all at one time and the wholesaler would say to the retailer one week. ‘You can have 6 tins of peaches this week,’ or something similar. So to avoid arguments, my mother saved up all the small numbers of tins until she had enough to give one to each registered customer in the same week. On one occasion I was in the shop when a customer said. ‘We don’t seem to have had tins of fruit for a long time Margaret.’ Before my mother could answer I piped up, ‘Oh, if you want a tin of fruit, my mummy has a lot upstairs in the bedding box.’ You can imagine how popular that made me!

Most people from Blackburn went to Blackpool, Morecambe or Southport, at the annual Wakes Week in July, often to the same boarding-house each year, but, as the war progressed, more and more soldiers were being billeted in Blackpool also many Polish Airmen, who had escaped capture by the Germans and came to join the Royal Air Force, so were learning to speak English in Blackpool. This was compulsory billeting but the landladies probably found it financially desirable, as their rooms were let all year and not just during the holiday season. We had always stayed at the same house in Bispham on our annual holiday and my parents had become friends with the proprietors, especially as they had a daughter my age and she used to come out with us, or she and I played in the house on wet~days, so, when Mrs.Lyons had soldiers billeted, she used to manage to fit us in an attic room and we ate in the kitchen with the family. It was there I first realised that men were being killed fighting in the war. We had been on holiday at this house in Bispham one year, at both Whitsun and July and had had poor weather both times. There was a Scots Guardsman billeted there who had children of his own back at home and he told us about them and made us laugh, telling jokes in an exaggerated Scottish accent. We also
played at board games and he taught us to play a card game called Fish! We scarcely cared if it rained and we couldn’t go out. A few months later, the next Whitsun, we went to Bispham again and asked where he was and the adults went peculiar, the way they did when you asked an awkward question, so 1 listened when they were talking afterwards and heard that he had been sent abroad and killed almost immediately.

We had evacuees sent to live in Blackburn, mainly from Birmingham and East London, so we learnt new games and heard about Air Raid Alerts where bombs actually fell and people lost their homes, but the big shock came when we got some families from Liverpool and the children threw themselves on the floor, screaming, whenever any plane flew over. One boy had been walking along a street in Liverpool with his father and uncle, when a German fighter plane flew over, machine-gunning, his father was killed and the uncle badly injured.

My father Tom Hill had his Medical to go into the Armed Forces, but he was Grade 4, so deemed unfit. He was often ill, as he had gone to work at Foster, Yates and Thom’s foundry at the age of 14, though he had won a scholarship to the Grammar School, but his parents said that they needed him to bring a wage home. He had also had pneumonia and rheumatic fever, both of which were killer diseases then, but he worked as a lorry driver for a firm of Wholesale Chemists and he was rarely off work. He volunteered for the Auxiliary Fire Service and was accepted. Most of the men in this service were unfit for military service for some reason, yet someone, somewhere, thought it a good idea to send them on fitness training for a week, when the instructor was from the commandos, so several of the men collapsed including my father, after a few days and needed medical treatment. The Blackburn fire engines were sent to Manchester and Liverpool Blitz and it was horrific. They were often away for days, out all night putting out fires and rescuing people from blazing buildings, catching some sleep on the engine, or where ever they could, during the day. When Criddles Treacle Factory was bombed, several firemen were killed when vats of hot treacle exploded. On one occasion, on the way to a raid, a bomb fell, exploding the Blackpool Engine, which was some way in front of the Blackburn one, whose crew had to go and help to move the bodies of men, some of whom they knew well. My father kept having bouts of tears when he returned from Birkenhead, where most of the families were connected with the Merchant Navy or Liverpool shipping. The town was virtually flattened in a night and in the morning the Merchant Seamen came back and staggered through ruins, searching for families. My father always retained a great affection for the people of Barrow, who, over one Christmas, New Year period, took firemen from other towns into their homes, fed them, and included them in their parties and found them a bed. During Air Raids, when people went to Air Raid Shelters, the Firemen, A.R.P., police and other services were out on the streets while the bombs fell; yet they got little credit for it. At Christmas officials from Blackburn Town Hall came into schools and took names of children with fathers in the Army, Navy or Air Force and they were invited to a huge party, yet one child in my class hardly knew her father was in the Army, as he was stationed in Blackpool, doing a clerical job and was hardly ever away from home. I know it’s all the luck of the draw, but my father did a valuable job, which saved lives and was, at times hellish, yet he, and those like him, had little appreciation and his health never recovered.

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