The Duration

Since I was young, my mother has told me about her experiences on the Home Front. As she is now nearly 90, her memories are becoming less precise and I should like to write them before they are forgotten.
Her experiences are probably no more and no less those of other people, but,along with the greater picture of battles and hardship, the life of the ordinary person should not be forgotten.

This is not one story, but a series of snapshots which sum up what happened.

The most frightening episode, and the one she still mentions most, is her attempt to change stations and trains during a bombing raid in Manchester in December 1941. She always starts with 'It's the horses I can't forget.'
In 1941, my mother was teaching near Leeds but was planning to spend Christmas with her family in North Wales. The train from Leeds pulled into Manchester station during a lull in the bombing and Mum asked the guard where she could get a taxi to Manchester Victoria! This despite the fact that trains were blazing around her, the station had been hit, and one of the trains had obviously been transporting horses. This train had also been hit, but in the chaos, human beings came first and no-one had had time to help the horses who were screaming and kicking in their attempts to free themselves. The guard turned Mum round, and told her to get back on the train she had just left, as it was the only train going anywhere at that time,and it was about to leave. As the train pulled out, the bombing restarted and the station was hit again. That guard saved her life. Unfortunately, her parents were expecting her, heard of the raid and feared the worst. It was a fortnight before letters finally reached them.

At that time, my Mum and Dad were courting. On one visit home to East Ardsley, they went for a walk down Woodhouse Lane. As they returned from their walk, they crossed a similar couple, just setting out. They said 'Goodnight'to them and walked on, aware of something falling all around them. The 'something' turned out to be shrapnel from ack-ack batteries. The other soldier and his girl were found dead the next morning only yards from where Mum and Dad had spoken to them. They had been hit by the shrapnel.

Mum always liked walking. Not content with a near-miss with the shrapnel, she and a female friend went for a walk across a minefield! They hadn't realised, until they were greeted by a white-faced soldier who explained that they had crossed a forbidden field.

It seems as though Mum had a death-wish; indeed, as the war progressed, she spent many an air-raid perched on the edge of the bath in her lodgings, with the couple who owned the house, instead of going to the air-raid shelter. Ever later, she said, she stayed in her bed; she thought she might as well die there as anywhere.

East Ardsley was a reception area, so not only was Mum teaching a double shift, but she was also billeting evacuees in the evenings. The saddest case she speaks of is a young boy, the only survivor of a direct hit on a London shelter, when all the rest of his family had been killed. The poor boy was dazed and confused and kept continually spinning round in circles.

The air-raid shelter for Mum's classes was in the basement of the local pub! All the classes in the school were kept well apart, so that no family was completely destroyed by one raid.

My parents married on my father's embarcation leave. He was in the R.A.M.C mental health pool and stationed in Deolale (Doolally!) in India. Occasionally, patients were repatriated, even to East Ardsley, and Dad would always sent a message to Mum via these irregular channels. One day, a Scots guard turned up in full dress uniform, saluted smartly and handed over a letter. This poor soldier was not as fortunate; he has been sent home on the understanding he lived with his mother alone. He was no longer to have a girl, as, it seems, he was too much of a risk.

A last comment on war-time bureaucracy! Mum had not even thought to ask permission of the
LEA to get married. When she received a letter pointing out that she needed such permission, she replied that, as she was free-born and over 21, she needed no-one's permission and that she was not going to get married again just to please a pen pusher. Needless to say, this was done in red ink!

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