Plans had been laid before the outbreak of war to transport our children into the countryside where they would be safe in the event of German bombing raids. There was even a poster depicting a shadowy Hitler whispering to a nervous mother “bring them back”
And if people didn’t remember the bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica in 1937 where perhaps 16,54 people died*, the scene in the film Things To Come just a year earlier where a town was completly destroyed by an air attack was a vivid reminder of the dangers of cities in wartime.
So in early September 1939 there were a total of 179,300 agreed billets for Manchester children and qualifying adults. These were across Lancashire, Cheshire into Derbyshire and as far as Staffordshire and Shropshire.
My friend John who lived on Reeves Road remembered making his may along Barlow Moor Road at the height of a raid pushing his wife in a pram who was about to give birth.
“There really was anything for it but just to get on with it. I often think now how daft we were but it all turned out alright.”
There are many more stories yet untold which will soon fade from living memory. Ian Meadowcroft remembers in the immediate post war period playing on local bombsites and Ida Bradshaw of bombs falling on the cinema on Barlow Moor Road by the park.
Majorie Holmes who was in her twenties and joined the RAF, vividly recounted nights in the cellar on Stockton Road during air raids.
We of course were not alone. If you stand in the small Stretford cemetery off the old road there is a telling memorial to those who died during these years and in particular the family groups who died when a local church was destroyed.
* This figure is disputed, Soviet sources suggested 800 but this did not account for those who died after being admitted to hospitals.
Picture, Evacuation from Chorlton Park School m09923 1939 C E Makepaece Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Informationand Archives, Manchester City Council.
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