大象传媒

My parents died just before the start of World War II and at the age of eight I ended up living with my Aunt Ruth at 57 Robert Street, Newton Heath, Manchester 10 (as it was designated in those days).

I can remember the building of two air raid shelters in our street. It was quite an exciting prospect watching them being erected. They were rectangular in shape with brick walls and a thick, heavy, concrete roof. These shelters filled up the lower end of the street entirely. The only places left for walking were the kerbs and flagsones outside each terraced house.

In each shelter there was a coke stove to keep it warm during the winter months. My Aunt volunteered to look after this stove and keep it stoked up; keeping it going each night so that it would be warm when we left our houses to seek the 'safety' of the shelter when the warning siren of an approaching air raid was heard.

I can remember many a night sitting (or lying) on a blanket in the shelter waiting for the All Clear sound. We would be quite talkative and cheerful at the beginning of the night but this would tail off into apathy the longer we had to stay there. These evenings were during the period 1940-41.

None of us ever anticipated a bomb actually falling in our shelter and one never did.

My biggest fear was for the safety of my Aunt. As a child, one picks up odd items of news. Unfortunately, one item stuck in my mind at that time - a woman had been murdered in an air raid shelter in the Manchester area. I did not know the details of this case or the atual whereabouts, etc, but it frightened me.

So, early in the evening, as my Aunt went into the empty, isolated,shelter, I would listen intently from my bed to the noises echoing from the shelter as my Aunt went about her business. The slightest difference to the usual sounds and my imagination would run riot. I would breathe a sigh of relief when she'd finished and locked up to return to the house. Until then I could not go to sleep.

We used to hear the noise of planes overhead during a raid and hear bombs falling in the distance but I was more frightened thinking about my Aunt's safety during this period than anything else. Obviously, this fear was heightened because of the short time that had elapsed since losing my parents and I was scared of losing another adult in my life.

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