Living through the Manchester Blitz

In the spring of 1940, I returned from my six-month “exile” as an unofficial evacuee in rural Derbyshire to my home, a public house in a working-class area of Salford, Lancashire. Life seemed relatively normal for a few months. I went to school, carrying my gas mask in its imitation leather case. My mother and father continued to run the pub, the windows of which were now covered with black-out curtains.
I can remember there being a severe shortage of beer and my father entering into an unofficial agreement with the landlord of a neighbouring public house to stagger opening hours. Cigarettes, too, were in short supply and one of my tasks was to help split packets of twenty into bundles of five (for regular customers only).
Then the night raids started. My brother, an ARP messenger, drove the family car (the roof of which soon became pitted with shrapnel holes) between ARP posts. When the sirens sounded in the middle of the night, we all descended into our large cellars, me in my miniature version of Churchill’s siren suit. As the raids intensified, my mother made up beds in the cellar (mattresses on a base of beer crates) and, through the autumn and winter of 1940/1, we slept there every night. It was a daunting experience for a seven-year-old, alone every evening, with only a small light and shadowy beer barrels for company. As Christmas approached, I became extremely concerned that Father Christmas might not be able to find me but he came up trumps with a splendid compendium of games, parts of which I still have. By now, my brother had joined the Royal Artillery and my future sister-in-law was “on munitions”, making aircraft parts in Chadderton.
During one air raid, a row of terraced houses opposite my school (London St), received a direct hit. Several people were killed and the blast destroyed one end of the school. It may have been during the same raid that several of our windows were shattered and loosened bricks came crashing down one of our chimneys, convincing my mother that her home had been destroyed above her head. After several days, temporary school accommodation was provided in a nearby Methodist Sunday School but, eventually, Salford LEA commandeered the school attached to St Barnabus’ Church, off Frederick Rd, and eventually renamed it Strawberry Hill Junior Council School.
Black US troops were in evidence, quartered on the nearby Manchester Racecourse at Castle Irwell. Some of the local landlords refused them admittance but my father was more pragmatic, maintaining that their money was as good as anyone else’s.
The family car was now laid up, as petrol for private motoring was no longer available. My father began to experience chest pains and shortness of breath. After two spells in hospital, he died in March 1943, leaving my mother to struggle to run a public house with inadequate male help (my brother, by then, was serving in North Africa and would not get leave until the following year).

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