“I lived in Stretford and my street came to a dead end at the railway lines. All the other side...Trafford Park...They dropped fire bombs, incendiaries...There was a policeman, lived about four doors below us, on the other side of the road. I could see an incendiary in his roof, flaring away. I thought ‘That’s going to burn’. So I bashed my way in the door, got up the stairs and stood on the banister to get to the loft...kicked a stay out that was holding the roof up, to prod this incendiary back out. While I was up there prodding this thing out, I heard this bomb coming down...in the next road, four houses were demolished...
“The next day...we set off to Droysden, we got into Chorlton and the air raid sirens went again. The air raid wardens made us go in the shelter, which was underneath a fruit shop. After about a couple of hours, I said ‘Oh come on it’s quiet now’, we’d heard a bomb or two...Well the streets were this high (waist high) with brick...they did a hell of a lot of damage... “...When we got home, my wife’s father was there, ‘Where have you been, you young buggers, leaving a bloody old man all on his own like this’. He was shaking the bed clothes out of the window. All the glass had gone, everything. I lived straight opposite him. When I got in, the back had been blown one way and the front the other way...that was Sunday...Monday I got up to at least go to my work and tell the boss that my house was a bit of a mess, to my surprise it was much worse there...in Salford...The next place to us was a big timber merchants, there wasn’t a thing there. Opposite was a big pea factors and almond grinders...they put a hosepipe into the river and they were training it on this factory, all heaps of bricks and steam coming up...Our factory had no roof on and nowhere round about was any gas or electricity...The boss said ‘Go home Barlow, get your house sorted and come on Friday for your wages’... “When we did finally get back working, the King was the first to come visiting, there was only our factory left, and a week later Winston Churchill...The King just sat in the car, he could see what he wanted to see from there. ‘Winnie’ sat up on the back of of the seat (in an open top car ) and lit a cigar...He was wearing lipstick, the King. Winnie didn’t... “I’d been a bit of a footballer and I’d signed for Manchester United...Actually I’d been playing for a year and a half, although I was only in the A team. I’d been down the mines...(the government) said that everybody that had worked in the pit had to go and sign on. Boss said ‘Oh you won’t have to go Barlow, this is radio location, highly secret stuff we’re doing’...I went to the labour exchange in Stretford, I said ‘My name is George Barlow and I used to work down the pit’. ‘Oh, right o’ he said ‘can you start tomorrow?’...It finished my football...well I played for Altringham a bit after. “...Yes, the bloody battle of Werneth Low...When I was living in Compstall (I was in the Home Guard)...I used to like a drink of beer in them days...Me and my brother-in-law, we’d been for a few pints. We went to bed and they had to knock us up. Everybody else knew that this was coming off, just an exercise, but we were thinking it was the real thing!..Down the back of Compstall there’re woods and that’s where the German parachutists always landed. There was a big orchard there and the lads were raiding the apples. That was the only battle that went on, scrumping!” |