Strange People from Starnge Places

I was a youngster growing up in Preston, Lancashire. My father was working night and day supervising aircraft production at English Electric, Strand Road plant and then on NFS or AFS night duty sometimes driving fire engines to blitzed Liverpool: I hardly knew him. My earliest war memories are of going to bed held by my mother as we looked up and saw huge swarms of "blackbirds" (German bombers) who seemed to turn over the town either right for Liverpool or left for Manchester. Water tanks were in the streets around our home and on the nearby playing fiedls sevring more as entertainment centres than war reminders. The nearby Moor Park had originally had trenches cut across across it to prevent parachute or airplane landings but then by 1943 as I began school it became a POW cap of two tiers; the inner barbed wire circle was for Germans and the outer for Italians who wore these brown suits with big blue or yellow circles on the jacket back. The Italians were allowed out to work on farms etc and they decorated the most ornate Christmas crib I had ever seen in the local Catholic chapel.
In July 1944 my father, mother and I were sent on a government directed wartime holiday to North Shore Blackpool for ten days. The crowd for the rare delayed train to Blackppol at preston staion was immense. In the surge to the train we were all separated and my father had his raincoat stolen from his arm.
I caused huge panic when paddling one day in a beach pool I pulled up a small cannonshell wondering what it was: the beach fled in horror. It turned out to be a small airforce cannon shell.Art the Sunday service we all went to the 10 a.m. service in the Jesuit church in Blackpool. In those days the Mass was in Latin so we didnt notice anything different until the priest mounted the pulpit and began a huge zealous oration in what we foudn out to be Polish! Itw as the first time I had ever heard a foreign language.The congregation were almosty entirely Polish troops staioned in and around Blackpool! More to follw.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.