Do the British Feel as If They Are Back in the Blitz?

xA0Not really. Most people are too young to remember that time. However, it does feel similar to what our parents and grandparents told us when we were growing up, though the major difference is that there is a much much much lower chance of death unless you are vulnerable.

A Personal Account

I knew someone who lived through the Blitz and did quite well out of it as they were a florist. However, only the wife ran the business and her husband disappeared for days as an auxiliary fireman. Don’t see many fires around at the moment and the florists are all closed.

Personal Reflections and Vivid Memories

No, it’s not the same at all. I’m 83 coming on 84, and I have very vivid memories of that terrible time. We lived in Oldham, a cotton spinning centre. We most certainly had a telephone at home and a motor car, a Ford eight horsepower which got us about quite nicely thank you. I have the most vivid memory of us driving up into the Pennine hills to grandmother’s house with me standing on the back seat and looking back at the city of Manchester behind us in flames. I think we had been telephoned by my uncle who lived close to the Manchester industrial centre of Trafford Park; these days, the home of Manchester United football club. He had just had the interesting experience of hearing explosions along his road in quick succession as some German unloaded a stick of bombs only a mile or so short of their target area.

The Impact of the Blitz

A day or so later we drove down to the uncle, crossing the centre of Manchester on the way. The commercial area was a shambles; street after street of once proud buildings now smoke-blackened and without roofs or windows. A fair amount has never been rebuilt; it has been turned into an open park and the central bus station. Trafford Park was untouched; it contained the main works of heavy electrical industry which much later would produce the linear accelerators that cured my prostate cancer. More importantly, the Avro works at Chadderton, which would a year or so later produce the Lancaster heavy bomber that breached the Mohne Dam, devastated the Ruhr industrial area, and finally helped destroy Dresden, was untouched. Incidentally, forget the present-day hype; Dresden was a major railway centre for the German troops facing the Soviet steamroller.

Personal Experiences

Three or four years later, mother came in the middle of the night and took my sister and I into bed with her – father by now was away in the marines, preparing for the great multi-national assault we now know as D-Day. Overhead came a new sound, like a huge fast revving engine, which suddenly cut out to be followed a few moments later by a huge explosion, thankfully a mile or more away. We found later it was a pilotless flying bomb, later known as a V-1, one of Hitler’s more or less random Vengeance weapons. How it came near us I have no idea; most likely, the fairly crude guidance system had failed.

I also very clearly remember what we called Bren Gun Carriers, miniature tanks about the size of a small bus but open topped, which had a training area on open rough ground opposite our front door. Based on a 1920s design known as the Vickers Tankette, these smallish open-topped vehicles used to drive down our road during crew training, do almost a spin curve on their metal tracks, and dive through a gap in the houses across from us and then leap about on the rough ground there. Oh how I wanted us to exchange our Ford for one!

Concluding Thoughts

I’m sorry if my reminiscing has wandered on, but I was warmed up a bit by a remark by some youngster that no one could remember WWII.

Further Reading and Resources

Accessed on October 15, 2023.

Keywords: the Blitz, World War II, personal memories