Manchester at War, 1939-45

by Graham Phythian

Anyway you will have time to get used to the idea. They won’t be demobilised as quickly as all that.

  (Manchester Evening News, 8 May 1945)

  Now that the European war is over, isn’t it time an official announcement was made reducing the period of overseas service for the army in the Far East to three years, thus bringing it into line with the RAF?

  These men have done a marvellous job, and it is high time they received some recognition.

  Mrs. R. Howarth, Delamere Road, Levenshulme

  (Manchester Evening Chronicle correspondence, 16 May 1945)

  DIANE SWIFT

  I remember the neighbours saying two soldiers were coming home now the war had finished. They lived at No. 6 Dunham Street [Hulme]. One of them had lost his sight.

  Hulme seemed to be alive with men in uniform: in the public houses, walking down Stretford Road, and getting married in uniforms.

  Next door to my mother was a handsome man in the army. Next door to them was a man that served in the Royal Navy, and next door was a slight but good looking man in the Air Force. They called them the Brylcreem Boys for some reason.

  A man called Percy who lived in our street came home from the Air Force (I think). He wasn’t very well. He was very quiet, and looked sort of weak. Not long after he died aged twenty-nine. His mother and father never opened the front door for three weeks. I visit his grave in Southern Cemetery every Christmas.

  FRANCIS HOGAN

  I was demobbed in 1947. When I got back to Manchester, there were second-hand motorcars, everywhere you went; it was second-hand motorcars, here, there and everywhere. Ex-War Department ones: cars, motorcycles. You could get one for about twenty-five quid. I suppose that was dear, really, in those days.

  I stayed at Metro Vicks for another three years, finished my apprenticeship, and went back in the Air Force.

  DENNIS WOOD

  I was demobbed from Somalia, or Somaliland as it was called then, in 1948.

  When I got back to Manchester, everything was stood at a standstill, as it were. The superstructure of all the bombed sites had been left. They were just about beginning to pull them down and straighten them up. Mostly it was fire damage, you see, so it had burned them out and left a shell; the walls were still there, the roofs had gone. In some cases, where there’d been a high explosive which had blown then right down; the authorities had made an effort to flatten it out so you had bombsites. Hundreds of bombsites. It was like rubble, banged down flat.

  Then the rationing of course was still on, I had another ration book!

  BARRY ABRAHAMS

  I didn’t know who my father was, which sounds rather strange, because he went off to war, and one of the things that people don’t realise is that when you went off to war you were often away for four to five years. And my father had seen me obviously when I was born, and then he went out to North Africa, and my first recollection of him was probably about 1946 – I’d be five. I was upstairs in bed, and there was a hullabaloo going on downstairs. That was my father returning home. Of course my mother was quite pleased to see him! So it was a relationship which had to start again.

  It was difficult, but somebody who you had to get to know. You understood as best you could as a child, and then my brother came along, and we were a family again.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  EIGHT

  CELEBRATING

  PEACE

  Good news at last! (Manchester Evening News)

  JEANNE HERRING

  Ivan [boyfriend from Ireland, later husband] went home for Easter 1945. The following months saw the end of the war in Europe. I remember we both went into town for the celebrations. Great excitement everywhere, as we sat in a café on Oxford Road and watched through the window the hordes of people passing by, shouting, laughing and making their way into Albert Square.

  ALICE CAMPBELL

  They were going to have a party in Manchester, and I said, ‘I can hear music, so I’ll try and get to Albert Square,’ and where Central Library is, in between the extension of the Town Hall, you were saying ‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ and you were stepping over couples. It was amazing. They were celebrating. Nine months hence there would probably be a lot of babies, but it was just accepted as the norm. I mean, you see pictures of how they’re letting their hair down, and it was packed so jam-full, you couldn’t get near any music.

  And I came back, and I went to what they called The Cotton Club [Upper Brook Street], and they were celebrating there. And it was also – there were a lot of Austrians there, refugees, Jewish refugees, and I can remember I made myself sick on chocolate truffles made with cocoa, and they were delightful.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  ANON.

  I remember the end of the war in Europe. We’d gone to bed and then there were bangs on a drum and everybody got up and the war was over. We went up to the town centre [Ramsbottom] and there was a shop where a man sold gramophone records and he played these records and people were dancing. Then we had street parties. The ladies made potato pies and they were allowed to use one of the chapels to make these. The best thing about it though, was that we didn’t go to school.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  NANCY DRUMM

  During VE Day I was in hospital. I was looking out of the window; all the staff had just heard about Belsen, and all the doctors were volunteering to go to Belsen and Germany. I remember that quite well.

  MARY LLOYD

  [Extracts from the diary of Mary Lloyd, Philip Lloyd’s mother, May 1945]

  Monday 7th May

  Nice sunny day. Dried washing out well. Evening papers announced ‘End of war in Europe’. Doenitz (Hitler’s successor) ordered ‘All Germans surrender’. The prime minister will not announce the end officially until tomorrow, but tomorrow, Tuesday, is to be VE Day and a whole holiday, and Wednesday as well, for everyone not on essential services. I got the washing finished and all ironed. It was after 11 p.m. before I had done.

  Tuesday 8th May, VE Day

  Shop open for papers and kept open until nearly dinner time. Very busy selling flags, etc., No staff in. Post Office shut. Put our big flag out. Started to pour with rain about 11 a.m. Cleared off about 3.30 p.m. Philip, Breta [daughter] and I went out on bikes to see the flags, etc. Another short shower. In for evening paper time. Then had tea in lounge. Opened a precious tin of peaches as celebration and had cream on it off the top of the milk. Then we all went to Manchester Road Church for the Thanksgiving Service at 7.30 p.m. Rev. Percy Bourne took service. Home again soon after 8.30.

  Listened to Premier’s official announcement of the end of hostilities in Europe at 3 p.m. We gave Breta a little silver bangle to remember VE Day, and Philip a pair of opera glasses.

  At 9 p.m. we all listened to the broadcast by His Majesty King George VI. He spoke very well and clearly for about fourteen minutes. At about 10.15 p.m., we all went out to see the sights. Walked down Ryebank Road & through Warwick Road station and on to see Stretford Town Hall illuminated. It looked very well floodlit.

  It was quite dark as we were coming back down Skerton Road and one building was floodlit red, white and blue. Lots of houses had fairy lights out. Quite a lot of bonfires going and plenty of fireworks about, including rockets. It was nearly 11.30 p.m. when we got in, Philip didn’t get to sleep after midnight for the first time in his life.

  The really official end of the war was one minute past midnight tonight, 8th May 1945. Hitler’s Reich ceases its legal existence.

  Wednesday 9th May, VE Day plus one day

  Second day of celebrations and a holiday. Nice and sunny all day, much better day for weather than yesterday. No papers here morning or night. Some were printed but only a few so we cancelled those.

  … Opened a jar of the apples I bottled last August and had custard with them.

  … Wishart’s [milliner’s] had their windows a blaze of lights and had it set out in red, white and blue. Shop window lights are allowed these two days.


  Thursday 10th May

  Five years since Churchill became prime minister. Back to usual, school etc. today, and extra cleaning and clearing up after two days not doing much work. Children out of school 3 p.m. today and tomorrow. After the children had been in bed some time, Philip came running down to say that he had seen the specially illuminated tram passing in front of the shops going to Chorlton. He had heard a row outside and got out of bed to see what it was. This was about 9.15 p.m. Expected it would come back the same way then go down the Grove [Plymouth Grove] so called him again about 10.30 p.m. and woke Breta up to see it.

  ANON.

  It was a wonderful night, and when the actual peace was first declared, we went to Albert Square with my dad, and that was jam-packed with people. They were all happy, singing and dancing, and throwing fireworks up in the air, and everything. I’ll never forget – it was euphoria.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  MARJORIE AINSWORTH

  It was gas lighting of course, and I remember when it came on again, just before VE Day I think it was, we were in town, and the gas lighter was walking up Mosley Street lighting the lamps and he’d collected quite a little crowd of people who cheered every time a light came on. That was good.

  DORIS WHITE

  I remember it was the Tuesday the 8th May, and word got round that Albert Square was going to be the place to be that evening. Me, my mother and my cousin Hilda listened to Churchill’s radio broadcast in the afternoon, and you got the feeling, you know, that there was some excitement in the air.

  Hilda and I were in our ATS uniforms, and I remember we left the house and at the end of the road, by the bus stop, we could hear music and cheering in the distance, down Stretford Road. Two full buses went past, full of people talking loudly and happily, singing and cheering. We got the third bus, also full of loudly celebrating people, and do you know the conductress wouldn’t let us pay! [laughs] It must have been the uniforms!

  The crowds in Albert Square on VE Day, 8 May 1945. (Daily Mail/News Chronicle)

  The bus turned into Oxford Road, then pulled up about 100 yards further on. The conductress told the passengers that was as far as they were going, so everybody off and best of British! [laughs] We were still a good way from Albert Square, but nobody seemed to mind the extra walk. The crowds were already tremendous, walking in the road, so no traffic could have got through.

  I remember we walked past the Tatler [cinema: also the Manchester News Theatre, and nowadays the Cornerhouse], which was showing a Donald Duck cartoon, I think, but nobody seemed to be bothered with that, there were no queues outside anyway. Hilda and I went round the side of the library, and by now the crush was so bad we had to struggle to stay with one another.

  Eventually we made it to the base of one of the statues in Albert Square. There was a crowd on the steps but one of them, a soldier I seem to remember, pointed to us and shouted something like, ‘Hey look, a couple of ATS girls – let ‘em up here, lads!’ So, slowly and with some difficulty, we squeezed through to climb two or three steps higher.

  When I turned to look round at the square I was astonished by the massive crowd, and wondered how Hilda and I had managed to get through the area jam-packed with thousands and thousands of people. As far as the eye could see there was a crush of people, many of them in uniform, cheering, singing and waving Union Jacks, not only in Albert Square but also in the streets round about, as far as you could see.

  The Town Hall had flags of all the Allied nations, and the singing was pretty well non-stop, ‘White Cliffs of Dover’, ‘Run Rabbit Run’, ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and other popular songs being belted out impromptu from various places in the square, sometimes one song taking precedence, sometimes another. It was like a gigantic party, a huge celebration and letting-go after all the bad years. It was a couple of hours I’ll never forget as long as I live.

  It was such a fantastic feeling, we didn’t even mind walking back home later!

  BOB POTTS

  I was transferred to a boys’ home in Rochdale in 1945, and we had a lot of freedom there. The Master of the Home, Mr Bowker, said, ‘We’re taking you to watch the VJ Day celebrations near the Town Hall.’ The VE Day celebrations had passed us by, we only got to hear about it from children at school. There were no radios or newspapers in the children’s homes.

  So there’s a big park behind the Rochdale Town Hall, and the park is on high ground, and the Town Hall is on low ground, and so we had a grandstand view. There were fireworks going on; it could have been about 15,000 people down in the square, they were just going mad, you know. They were dancing, laughing and joking, shouting, dancing in the streets, singing, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was jubilation. ‘The bloody war’s over at long last!’

  DIANE SWIFT

  We had a party. Tables were all down the middle of the street [Dunham Street, Hulme]. Buntings used to run across the streets and were displayed in people’s parlour windows. I was only six years old when this happened, but I do remember the neighbours being very happy.

  BRIAN SEYMOUR

  We had a street party [Perkins Street, Salford]. We brought tables out and put them in the middle of the street, which were all cobbled. And there were flags hanging out of the windows, and they put bunting across the street. All the kids sat round, and we played games: blind man’s buff. There were cakes and jellies and ice creams, and there was a corner shop further down, and she made home-made ice cream. What was she called? … Everson, Mrs Everson, and she provided a tub of ice cream.

  MARJORIE AINSWORTH

  We were expecting it, but I was working at the time in Openshaw, at the LNER; I was in the office there, so all the girls decided we’d celebrate by going to Belle Vue, which had a magnificent ballroom and always very good bands. So we went to Belle Vue ballroom, then I think we had a drink in the bar, and then one of the girls said, ‘Come back to my place, I’ll make some dried egg omelettes.’ [laughs] I think we were allowed one egg a week or something, but you could occasionally get a tin of dried eggs which were all right for scrambling.

  I remember dancing on that night and it was absolutely crowded, but I didn’t go down into town.

  FRANK ELSON

  When the war ended … the headmaster at Deane Primary handed out the certificate signed by the king almost a year later and, going to my grandmother’s house, all the houses had ‘welcome home’ banners outside, but that would have been well after the war finished, of course.

  My most vivid memory of that period was being taken to the top of Quebec Street [Deane, West Bolton] at night to watch Bolton’s street lights being turned on again. The time had been announced and there was quite a crowd. There were not as many houses blocking the view as there are today and it was quite spectacular. I was completely amazed. I had grown up in the dark and simply did not realise that street lighting was possible! I can’t remember what I thought lamp posts were for, they were just there.

  (From World War II: An Account of Local Stories)

  T. MARRIOTT-MOORE

  In Sale, I remember a parade, and of course all the organisations converged on Sale Town Hall with flaming torches, and I thought to myself, now this would make a wonderful picture, if someone were to shout, ‘Hang the councillors up and burn the Town Hall!’ [laughs] But of course the Town Hall had already been burnt. There was that, the torchlit procession, and there were various celebrations.

  (North West Sound Archive)

  ELIZABETH CHAPMAN

  The country gave itself up to great rejoicing. What happened? What didn’t happen! There were street parties, pub parties – every kind of party! Bunting and red, white and blue decorations were everywhere. Amongst other festivities, I was invited to a Victory party in a neighbour’s house where again, despite rationing, cakes, jellies, sausage rolls, trifles, all sorts of goodies had been conjured up from goodness knows where, and there was great merry-making.

  A little country pub called the Farmer’s Arms, not far
from my home, was surrounded by a picket fence. Every one of the struts had been painted red, white and blue. Union Jacks hung out of every window. People lit bonfires. Blackout curtains were taken down and thrown away forever. It was Double British Summer Time at that period so it stayed light until quite late, 10.30 p.m. or thereabouts. At their parties and bonfires people sang all the songs that had become popular during the war years: ‘Bless ’Em All’, ‘When the Lights Come on Again’, ‘We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’, and the never-failing and everlasting ‘Roll Out the Barrel’! What a celebration!

  (From One Child’s War)

  DR R.A. CRANNA

  I was still a medical student on VE Day, and we had a grand time celebrating in Manchester in front of the town hall, standing on an air-raid shelter, dancing away. And on VJ Day, there were really very similar celebrations. I went back into Manchester where all my contemporaries were, and again we had a great celebration. I remember the next morning at the surgery the first patient in, he said, ‘I don’t feel so well, doctor. I think I’m going to be sick.’

  I said, ‘Excuse me,’ and I went out and I think I was sick at the thought of it! That was the hangover.

  (North West Sound Archive)