|
 | |  | |
Patricia Bridgen Farley was a Wren (Womens Royal Naval Service) stationed at Portkil, Near Kilcreggan, Scotland during World War II, living in a house affectionately known to the group of Wrens that were based there as 'The Barn'. The Wrens came to be known as the 'Barnites'.
I was living in a southern suburb of Manchester in the 40's and, although the city was a large, industrial centre, it was not bombed as much as, Liverpool and Birmingham, and certainly nothing like the Nazi reign of terror, imposed on London. But we did have air raids.
Before I joined the Navy and was still attending secretarial school, my father, a resourceful electrical engineer, had decided that his daughters should bed down in the cellar every night, and not just when the air raid siren began its awful moaning. We British called it 'Moaning Minnie'.
Daddy put in pit props to hold up the cellar ceiling. He installed electric heating pipes for warmth and we slept on army-type cots and were quite comfortable, getting a full night's rest. Our parents only came downstairs if they thought the bombs were falling too close.
It was spooky to hear the city's portable anti-aircraft batteries, mounted on wheels, rushing up and down suburban streets aiming into the sky.
Our house suffered no great damage, apart from a blown out front door and some broken windows. Blast does funny things. You never know exactly where it will affect a building.
There was a memorable occasion, when I was not at home, when a parachute bomb drifted down over the church cemetery and became tangled up in the branches of an old oak tree. That was a lucky happening because it could have exploded on hitting the ground and done a lot of damage.
The Police and Army personnel were called in and all houses were evacuated for a certain area around the bombsite, until the very brave Army Engineers could get a chance to defuse it. Which, I'm happy to say, they did.
My father had a friend who joined the Engineers at the beginning of hostilities. He died soon after the war ended of a heart attack, brought on, so everyone said, from the intense stress he suffered in many dangerous situations involving bombs.
| |  | |  |
To add a comment you must first login or join for free, up in the top left corner.
|
|
