HALSALL FLARE

HALSALL FLARE

During the war I lived with my parents on Halsall Hill next to
the Leeds to Liverpool canal; the”Cut”in the picture above
One night my parents shouted for me to come downstairs. I found them
easily under a square table in the corner of the room,because for a
while this night was much brighter than any day so far. Too bright.
Later they showed me my baby gas mask, which looked more of a squeeze
than the table had been.
Next day,I watched a two-seater aeroplane fly over at
tree height and later on got pushed in a ‘pram to a field at Plex lane
where a twin-engined aeroplane had bent its propellers.One of ours?
Another night, I was put on my father’s shoulders to see the glow in
the night sky over the end of the canal at Bootle Docks.
My parents put me on a train at Preston. At Grange over Sands
I heard American voices from the carriage ahead.The station platform
had beautiful flowers.I was lucky enough to have the carriage to
myself all the way to Workington on the Cumberland coast but could not
let down the window on its leather strap to let relatives know I’d
arrived.The train was at terminal buffers,so I was soon collected!
Grandmother took me along on her Sunday school outing bus
to Silloth.(by now I was four year old). Silloth airfield was alive
with aeroplanes.I recall being told to sit down and stay
silent in case there were spies! I spotted a clip of bullets under a
grid which my new pal flung at the kerb. His dad soon pliered the
cordite out and showed us how it burned on a coal fire.
I was returned to Lancashire to a house next to a farm that
kept Italian prisoners of war. These P.O.W.s sold baskets made from
willow boiled in a tin bath to soften the bark enough to strip it off
using a gypsy style peg.From the farm wall I saw Canadian soldiers
march towards Halsall Church. Later that day my class was taken on a
ramble along the Runnel by our teacher,“Miss” Halsall. Canadians were
calling out“friend or foe?”. Rip-raps were on the barrels of their
rifles.My mother subsequently complained that she had to run when a
discarded cardboard tube I’d collected filled the house with orange
smoke when added to the fire. Dad was a member of the local Home
Guard,who held a concert for all in the village hall.

..........In my teens a vicar stopped me in Corporation Street,
Workington, in order to tell me that the folding motor scooter I rode
was a copy of one he’d parachuted into North Africa.
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