Rusty Garnet's War

I thought the bombs were fireworks. I asked my mum where Guy Fawkes was. The one thing I remember was we were moved to York from Manchester, into new accommodation and left the Manchester Blitz behind.

There were lots of different nationalities in York from supporting nations e.g. Canadians and French. There were 5 different nationalities in total.

The night the war started we had no where to hide so my mother took us to a farmers field and sat us behind a hedge with one blanket between us. She said to us “do not move from here no matter how many bright lights you see” I remember saying to her “but we haven’t got a cushion”, she said “never mind a cushion — if you want to sleep, lie on each other”.

I’ll always remember that. Shortly after a head popped over the hedge and it was the air raid warden. He said “are you asleep? You can speak to me I’m your next door neighbour”, so we said “Yes”.

You see we hadn’t met them before as we had only just moved in. He turned out to be the local vicar. He took us over the road to where he lived as he had an Anderson Shelter in their house. The he said “Now I’ll go and find your mother”, we were very lucky.

Q. Tell us what an Anderson Shelter is?
A. Reinforced metal completely flat oblong. The top and bottom and supported corners are reinforced metal, it reminded me of a cage.

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