Let us go forward together

Sybil - carrying on from the last blog and about the Second World War. Born in 1940 I had little knowledge of the war but my mother told me of my first war time experience. I was about two or so. It was a fine day and Mum sat me outside on the lawn at the back of our house. A little while later a German fighter started to strafe the gardens of the houses were we lived. Mum panicked picked me up and rushed into the house, a bullet crashed through the kitchen window and lodged deeply in the opposite wall. It was a near thing but that was about my only real wartime experience, Mike had one or two.

Mike – we lived in a semidetached house, at the start of the war Mum and Dad strengthened the cellar where, when the air raid siren went we used to go, in fact I had a bed and slept down there with my cousins most nights. During the Manchester blitz a bomb fell at the end of our road which prompted my parents to move to a house at the edge of and outlying town. We had just moved there and had not yet built a shelter when a single German bomber (lost we presumed) dropped a bomb. I was in bed with my mother as we heard the whistle of it dropping. I was terrified and was sure it was going to land on us. When it hit the ground the house rocked all the windows blew in but apart from the blast we were safe. The following morning I with one or two local kids went over to the crater it caused hunting for shrapnel. We all came away with a souvenir funny how resilient kids are. I was older than Sybil so had more experiences later in the war but these memories are all useful for her to draw on for her new book.