Manchester at War, 1939-45

by Graham Phythian

  People saw objects coming out of the bomb doors, but when they got to the ground these objects dispersed: they were leaflets, official leaflets from the Chief Constable of Manchester, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and drawing attention to the dangers of being run over.

  PAT HARGREAVES

  I could see my eleven-year-old brother John in his short trousers, braces and vest dashing from the house [in Kersal, Salford] with the bin lid held over his head for protection. And I can still hear the sound of shrapnel hitting it, after all these years.

  (Manchester Evening News supplement, 5 September 1989)

  THREE

  DEFENSIVE

  MEASURES

  It was Hitler’s intention with the ferocious bombing and incendiary raids to break the spirit of the civilian population. There is ample evidence in what follows to show that throughout the war, in Manchester as in other cities, it had exactly the opposite effect.

  ‘The first day I got my Home Guard uniform – I’m getting the trousers next year …’

  Robb Wilton, Lancashire comedian: The Day War Broke Out

  A city police officer scans the skies for Luftwaffe bombers in 1940. (Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives)

  T. MARRIOTT-MOORE

  I remember one of my friends was captain in the Terriers [Territorial Army], and of course they were called up a week before war was declared, just in case, and he said, ‘I’m going on my rounds tonight, would you like to come with me?’

  So I said, ‘Yes, what are you doing?’

  He said, ‘I’m inspecting gun positions.’

  I said, ‘Oh well, that should be interesting.’

  So we went the various rounds, and these were improvised guns, against aircraft, and they were basically a post, a special swivel, a rifle with a sandbag on the butt, so that it would help the chap to keep the rifle pointed up in the air, and they were the anti-aircraft defences of Manchester at that time!

  Of course during the war if you heard an aircraft, you knew jolly well it wasn’t one of yours, because all ours were down on the South Coast. You could just plot this uneven hum of the engines, and then the anti-aircraft guns would open up. A lot of them were mobile, but there was a fixed battery of anti-aircraft guns on Carrington Lane, Ackers Farm [west of Ashton-on-Mersey], thereabouts, and they were surrounded by a whacking great barbed wire fence. [Manchester City FC training ground is now on the site of what used to be Ackers Farm.]

  (North West Sound Archive)

  BILL ASHTON

  They appealed for Local Defence Volunteers. Anthony Eden made an appeal – it would have been June/July 1940 – for volunteers, and the order was to report to the nearest police station. All people who had any arms, shotguns, or any ordnance, to hand in to the police station. They were expecting a few hundred, they got thousands and thousands. The response was overwhelming them. The police didn’t know what the hell to do with them [laughs] because they’d been given no instructions, but bit by bit the thing got sorted out.

  They called for all volunteers between the ages of seventeen – I thought it was seventy, but I hear recent reports with sixty-five, but seventy really rings a bell, I’m sure it was seventy, and in any case they weren’t too fussy about what age you were anyway.

  The Post Office Home Guard was designed for defending telephone exchanges, vital lines of communication, etc., etc. We were scattered: there was the battalion headquarters which was in Manchester, and then each post office around Manchester: there was Swinton Post Office, Walkden, Urmston, Irlam, Longford, Sale. When I say post office I mean engineers in that area, in the telephone exchanges and workshops and things. Each of these places formed a platoon.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  Sale Home Guard marching down Washway Road in 1942. (Manchester Evening News)

  BOB WILD

  You could have a Morrison shelter – an iron mesh structure to go under your table, or, if you had space and money, a brick and concrete one, or an Anderson shelter. Like most people, we opted for an Anderson.

  The shelter had to be erected in a hole at least 3ft deep. Some people dug them deeper but in some parts of Prestwich they filled up with water if you dug down deeper than 2ft. You had to heap the earth from the hole on to the top and sides for extra protection. The shelter was 6ft high, 8ft wide, and 9ft long. With its rounded roof it looked a bit like an igloo. My dad marked out an area in the back garden and dug the hole. It seemed enormous to me. After a foot or so down the rich, black soil turned to gravel and then to pure, golden sand like on Blackpool beach. I let my rabbit dig in it. I had only looked away for a second and it had disappeared down a hole. Our Ernie put his foot on the sand and the hole caved in. I screamed. My dad came to the rescue and quickly dug out the rabbit.

  My dad made duck-boards for the inside of the shelter and built two wooden bunks and a slim, wooden bed for my grandma. There was no room to move when we all got inside.

  (From The Dogs of War: A Prestwich Boyhood)

  NORA MARJORIE MAY

  We had one of the – what do you call them? – air-raid shelters in the garden, the one that was built into the ground, with corrugated iron – Anderson shelter – and Dad had fitted it out with floorboards and bunks, and light, and we slept in there every night, the three children. I rather think that’s why my sisters came down with asthma and pneumonia, because obviously it was damp. And there were spiders in it!

  I can still remember teaching [my sister] how to say her prayers, even including Hitler! God bless Hitler – could He change Hitler?

  (Courtesy of Life Times Oral History Collection, Salford Museum and Art Gallery)

  FRANCIS HOGAN

  I joined the Home Guard in 1941. Sixteen, I think I was. That was supposedly too young. You had to go to the police station, and it depended on who was on duty there. [laughs] There was one bloke, he’d accept anybody. This other bloke, he told me to come back again. So, as I walked out of the police station, a friend of mine is walking past. He said, ‘Where’ve you been?’

  I said, ‘I’ve been trying to join the Home Guard.’

  He said, ‘Oh, I’m in it.’ He was about the same age as me.

  I said, ‘He told me to come back when I was a bit older.’

  He said, ‘Hang on, I’ll go and have a look who’s on duty there now,’ so he went in and he said, ‘He’s OK, he’ll let you in.’

  So I went in and said [gruff voice], ‘I want to join the Home Guard.’

  He said, ‘Sign here.’ [laughs]

  BILL ASHTON

  Where the Home Guard would be really useful, although in the early days they were ill-equipped, they would be good lookouts. Whereas the army couldn’t be everywhere, out on the moors, and tunnels, and places like that, they could report the Germans coming down. Communications were essential, and they could pass the message on. The object was to take them [the enemy] on – but you’d be cannon fodder – if you could delay them, anything to delay them, delay them.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  MARJORIE AINSWORTH

  My brother was in a reserved occupation; he was in the laboratory at Beyer Peacock’s [locomotive manufacturers in Gorton] so he didn’t have to join up, but he joined the Home Guard. He had to join the Home Guard. I remember him coming home in his uniform, bitterly complaining [laughs] that he had to pretend to guard Denton Golf Club in the freezing cold! No he didn’t like it, because after a day’s work – it was quite hard difficult work in the lab, he had to make trips down to the foundry and things like that – and then to have to go out on some ‘mission’ to save Denton Golf Club!

  There was usually an air-raid warden in the street who used to check that no lights were showing, and that no blackout curtains were leaking. I remember having a lesson in the road given by the air-raid warden, on the use of the stirrup pump to put out any incendiary bombs.

  ARTHUR ROBERT DAVENPORT

  Next door but one to my home [in Newton Heath] lived my Aunt Esther and Un
cle Wilfred Parker, where they had an air-raid shelter built in their back yard for the nearby neighbours. My dad made a raised bunk bed in the shelter for me to sleep in. Sometimes I would roll off and land on the occupants, much to their amusement. The tiny area, 6ft by 6ft, was lit by a small Kelly lamp fuelled by oil, and there were forms around the walls. At one end of the shelter there was a square filled with loosed bricks in case of an emergency, to escape through if the door got blocked. We could hear the bangs of the ack-ack guns that sounded as though they were trundling around the streets.

  There were no men in the shelter because they’d had to join the ARP and be out on fire-watch duty. Their Headquarters were on Dean Lane, about 60 yards from Oldham Road in the old billiards hall. Mr Perry of Hethorn Street was the Chief Warden, and my uncle Wilfred was in charge of ‘chemicals’, as he had a good sense of smell. He worked for the Co-operative Wholesale Society, and because he was a great cyclist, he knew the shortest distances and back lanes for lorries carrying goods to the various towns and villages in England and Wales. Petrol was a priority in those days.

  JEANNE HERRING

  My reserved job [in a bank] meant that I would not be called up into the wartime services, the Army, Navy, Air Force or work in a munitions factory. Looking back, I reckon that was why my mother was so keen for me to join the bank, but she never mentioned it. Knowing my rather rebellious nature, she knew I would probably be itching to join up. She was right. I decided to join the WRAF cadet force for something to do in my spare time.

  I really enjoyed this period. We were issued with Air Force blue uniform, went for lessons in Morse code, had keep fit lessons and learnt square bashing [marching]. We even had lessons in unarmed combat and I loved it all! So much so that I was eventually promoted to Warrant Officer, was given better quality uniform with a badge on my lower left sleeve, and I taught drill!

  The Women’s Junior Air Corps (WJAC) was quite an active organisation. There was a corresponding cadet force attached to the Wrens. There was a parade through Albert Square on one occasion, I forget the reason, but Frank, Kathleen’s husband, saw me marching in front of our unit and teased me about it. It was the nearest I got to joining the Services.

  It was while I was at the High Street branch that the Battle of Britain took place. I remember having discussions with the members of staff about the number of German Messerschmitts that our Spitfires had shot down; it made headline news in the paper as it was the first victory after the awful events of Dunkirk. It was exciting to listen to the radio and to hear Churchill’s famous speech, ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few.’

  MARJORIE AINSWORTH

  We lived in St Philip’s Road in Gorton [south of Sunny Brow Park] and we had a sort of communal shelter in Lime Grove, which were just brick-built things with concrete roof, and everybody went in. You tried to keep warm: we had various ridiculous ways of trying to keep warm. One was you got a terracotta plant pot, stuck a candle in it, and put another terracotta plant pot on the top, and that was supposed to keep you warm! [laughs] It wasn’t very efficient, but people did that sort of thing. You took a flask, and as many covers as you could provide.

  To pass the time, sometimes there was a little sing-song, or we just chatted. I remember Mr Wimbury used to recite poems. ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’ – nearly every time! [laughs] That was until the all-clear went; when the sirens gave the all-clear, then we used to go home. Sometimes we’d be there nearly all night, but it did vary. You’d go home once and then it’d start again sometimes.

  My husband and I, we were courting at the time, and we had a map with all the shelters written on, so we used to cross them off: we did a lot of our courting in these shelters! It wasn’t that bad because if you got home late it didn’t matter, you could always say you’d been in a shelter somewhere [laughs]. So we quite enjoyed that.

  I remember going to Stockport to a Hallé concert – the Free Trade Hall had been bombed, so the Hallé was moving about – when the sirens went, and we went in those wonderful tunnels that they’d built under Stockport [now the Museum on Chestergate]. We spent a few hours in there.

  A typical set-up with benches and bunk beds in a communal air-raid shelter bunker. (Author’s collection/Stockport Air Raid Shelters Museum)

  The blackout, if it was a full moon, a moonlit night, and it was clear, you could see, you had no problems. But on a cloudy night or overcast, it was a bit difficult getting about. You didn’t worry about walking about. You were allowed a little torch with a number 8 battery, and the edges of the pavements would be painted white.

  BRIAN SEYMOUR

  I can remember schools having like a Warships Week or an Aeroplane Week, where you took along anything that was metal – old pans – anything that was lying around, and they opened a store room and you just threw the stuff in. They took the railings away from Albert Park [Salford], and left the gates! Every night, they locked the gates, they called him the parkie, and every night he locked the gates! And you can still see on some wall somewhere the holes where the railings fitted into the wall. Like round the church. They went for the war effort.

  A couple of weeks after Warship Week or whatever it was, the headmaster would announce in assembly how much we’d made. Because they used to collect envelopes with flaps for pennies, and when it was full you handed it in.

  DONALD READ

  We were reminded of the heavy financial cost of the war each week when money was collected at school for war savings. We bought stamps which, once they reached a value of 15s [75p], were converted into savings certificates. I paid in 2s 6d [12½p] a week. ‘The Hulmeian’, the school newsletter, published the amount collected each term – almost £300 for Michaelmas 1943. The pressure to save was continuous, and I saw a shrapnel-scarred bomber on show in Piccadilly, Manchester, as part of a ‘Wings for Victory’ display. My diary for 25 April 1944 mentioned a local savings ‘thermometer’, which measured the amount invested in one savings campaign: ‘Didsbury’s final “Salute” total £120,204, target £50,000.’This campaign had even involved my father, for on 16 April I noted: ‘Went to town to see Pa in “Salute the Soldier”.’ I presume that his Home Guard unit had marched in a special parade.

  (From A Manchester Boyhood in the Thirties and

  Forties: Growing Up in War and Peace)

  THE £1 ONION

  Among gifts to Sale War Weapons week total is a £1 note from a boy of nine, and another from the raffle of an onion. Today’s total is £185,920.

  (Manchester Evening News, 20 March 1941)

  ROY MATHER

  In Longsight, near where I lived for most of the war, Grey Street recreation ground, they come there with a barrage balloon, there was a site there. They used part of the recreation ground to put up the balloon. They put billets up for the RAF in the village. There was a small RAF balloon unit in them days.

  The blackout, well they blacked out on the 1st of September, before the war started. That was the Friday, when all these evacuees was coming [to Glossop]. They knew the war was coming, they were expecting it. Going back to that, in 1939 they issued gas masks, and they were issuing them at the local school; well I got mine and of course I went home with a gas mask in a little box, and I got told off for doing it! [laughs] ‘What are you getting involved for? You should have waited for us to go as well!’

  The Home Guard came round recruiting, and the slogan was, to the seventeen-year-olds: ‘Be a man and join the Home Guard!’ That was the slogan. And then the chaps who were in reserved occupations, they recruited them to the Home Guard from where they were working, so they joined the Home Guard unit in the works, like at Metro Vicks here. It was disbanded in 1944.

  DENNIS WOOD

  I was in the Home Guard, Lancashire Fusiliers, and it was the 41st Division. The platoon I belonged to was at Blackley, at a place called the water tower, with a large assembly room underneath the tower, and that was our parade room. My father was the sergeant, and I was in the Army Cadet For
ce, and when I was 16 he brought me into the Home Guard as a messenger, along with another two lads who were friends of mine. This was about 1942–43. I stayed in the Home Guard until I was 17, and then I volunteered for the Army.

  The next platoons were in Heaton Park, and Crumpsall. There were plenty of us. You started at seventeen, and you could be bloody ninety, as long as you were fit! They were mostly ex-World War I. It went on from being in civvies with sticks, and they got proper uniformed platoons with equipment.

  We used to have regular exercises, manoeuvres like, a section over there hidden away because they had the only machine gun. They’d pass it round, Sunday to Sunday. I remember this particular time, there were three of us with this machine gun at the top of this hill, it was a good vantage point, the River Irk where it went under Victoria Avenue. I had to keep going to them, first of all with tea in vacuum flasks, they’d been hidden there about four hours. I got up to them where they’d been waiting for the Canadian commandos who were coming through – they were on their exercises, they’d come from Liverpool. There was no live ammunition or anything, but they had British Army umpires, and if they thought you would have been killed, you put an armband on and you were out of it. So anyway this particular machine-gun post had been there all morning, and I got sent up with tea, and just as I got there, the first of these Canadians came into view. And then a crowd of little snotty-nosed kids came up from behind us, and by now pom! Flares were going off, pom! – very exciting – and whoever was in charge said, ‘Go on, bugger off!’ and the kids did go back a bit. And then they started hiding. Two great big gigantic Canadians came up the hill, dodging about, and just before they got to us all these kids stood up and said, ‘Here ’e is, Mister, here ’e is!’ [laughs] Of course they were all captured, and they never fired a shot.