Damn the Nazis

Sarah Torpey, grandmother and iconoclast, once during an air-raid left the shelter saying. "Damn the Nazis, I'm off to my bed." Similarly, she spent hours turning milk into butter by hand saying "Damn the Nazis, I'm not eating margarine for anybody".

For the boys in the family and area of course, the war was an adventure. We actually wanted to watch it and climbed neighbours trees to watch the flashes from the Ack-Ack guns on the East Lancs Road during air raids.

We went to inspect unexploded land mines in nearby fields, and went on shrapnel hunts after the air-raids.

I can also remember being awakened by parents who had left me asleep in the shelter when a raid cleared, only to find that the shelter had flooded and I was afloat on an old mattress. All exciting stuff to us then.

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