“We’d gone to a party in Hyde. Previously the air raid sirens had gone quite often, and then the all clear had gone immediately after. This time...it was unbelievable. There were clouds of them, planes coming over. It was terrifying, it really was, you could hear this solid droning come over, fade away and then another one came behind it. We all decided that we’d better try to get home...We asked if there were any trains coming out of Manchester. They said they’d been told there was one due...at 10 o’clock...provided it wasn’t blown up on the way. So we were stuck on Hyde station and looking down the line towards Manchester, it was just like looking at a massive volcano, burning, the whole place was just one big red glow...already the place looked as if it was impossible to make it any worse, but still they kept dropping these bombs. We’d see these flashes, it was horrendous. You didn’t want to see it but you couldn’t stop looking.
“When I got married we lived in Hyde for a short while and the came back to Marple when Jeffrey, that’s my son, was born...Because George was in the airforce he didn’t like me being on my own...so he asked my Dad if I could come back home...Before the war I was a glove machinist...As soon as the war started they automatically changed over to government work which was webbing...I was on those until I had Jeffrey...in 1941. I stayed at home until he was walking and then my step mum decided...I could go back to work and she’d look after him. I went back to work in Romiley where they were making flying helmets. “(After the raids had subsided) we’d got so blasé I can’t remember the time, but Jeffrey was about, he’d perhaps be six or nine months old...This was a lovely summer’s night, the sky was midnight blue and it was hot so I’d got the window open. I was just dozing off when the sirens went. I lay in bed and I thought ‘no, I’m not getting up’. I was just turning over when I suddenly heard a plane...in the distance. Well it got louder and louder, and then suddenly there was a huge flash, the whole room was lit as if you’d switched on the lights, I could of read a newspaper with it. I thought ‘god, they’re going to drop bombs’ and I jumped out of bed. I heard this plane was right near, without thinking I opened the window wide and hung out...There was this plane skimming the rooftops, with a big German sign on, And I could see the pilot clear as anything...he kept circling round and then suddenly he went. We found out after...he was trying to pinpoint where he was on Hollins Mill...(we heard) they shot him down somewhere on the outskirts of Manchester. “My husband was sent to Italy...When the partisans hung Mussolini...he was there. He saw them hanging there...him and his mistress, with their clothes tied up, hanging by their ankles...” |