Page 8 - Moravian Messenger July 2020

Growing Up in World War 2
Some very personal memories and reflections
You might say that, for me, the Second World War began in church. At the morning service at Westwood Moravian Church on Sunday, 3rd September at the end of the sermon, someone gave a message to the minister, Br Edward Barker and before the last hymn he told us that the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had just announced on the radio that we were now at war with Germany. When I got home, my parents (usually part of the evening congregation) were busy organising a black out for the living room window. From now on, after dark, there would be a minimum of street lights and no light showing from house windows, just one of the changes we had to get used to in the coming months. From now on, the war would be a constant background to daily life, quite often coming to the foreground.
To a ten year old like me, war was something you read about in comics and adventure stories. We soon discovered the reality was very different. The fighting in Europe, the retreat from Dunkirk, reports of casualties and, nearer home, food rationing and air raids night after night were a constant reminder, if we needed one, that we were living in dark days. Oldham was not a prime target for the bombers but being on the edge of Manchester with the Ship Canal and many large factories we did not escape altogether. The wail of the sirens calling us to take cover, followed by the heavy drone of German bombers with the noise of anti-aircraft guns and, sometimes, the thud of an exploding bomb became familiar sounds. I still remember my mother and auntie returning home with smoke blackened faces after going to see if another auntie and uncle were safe after their house had been damaged during the Manchester blitz a few days before Christmas 1940.
There were personal sadnesses too. I moved to secondary school in the autumn of 1940. One morning a couple of prefects came to our classroom to look after us until the teacher arrived. One of them came and sat on my desk and chatted to me. He knew me because we both attended Westwood Church but you can imagine what an impression it made on the rest of the class that this young man of 18 should come and talk to me. In normal times he would have been going to University but now he was waiting for his Call Up papers. They soon came and within a year he had been killed in action, one of two of that age group in the congregation who lost their lives in the early years of the war.
There were lighter moments. Like most of the houses in our street, we had a small brick air raid shelter in the back yard but we soon stopped using that. One night, in the middle of the night, the siren wakened us and we got out of bed and moved into the shelter where we stayed for the next hour or so of absolute silence. Later in the day we discovered that what had wakened us up was not the warning siren but the All Clear! After that, if a raid seemed likely, I slept under the big kitchen table, considered just as safe and certainly more comfortable than the shelter.
As the months went by, daily life in Britain became more routine against the background of the war: for adults, the routine of daily work often in factories making planes and weapons, for children and young people, the routine of school. Well, perhaps not quite routine. In the final years of the war, twice we were
invited to do our bit for the war effort by going to farming camp near Stratford where we discovered a completely different way of life from anything we had known in industrial Oldham. It was easy to forget that in many parts of the world, fighting was still going on, people were dying and suffering, bombs falling causing havoc and destruction. Then there would be a vivid report on the radio or picture in the paper and we knew war was still the grim reality.
There was little in the way of outside entertainment so the church came to play an ever bigger part in the lives of the quite big group of young people at Westwood Moravian Church. Not many of those young people are still around but Sr Anne Geary is still active and I am grateful that she shared some of her memories. She came to Westwood when she joined the Guides. Even though it was war time, in the summer, Emily Shaw, Guide Captain, would take the girls to explore the moors just outside Oldham and even to Guide camps. At one of those, Anne remembers their excitement seeing parachutists in training. She writes, 'I think taking a group of youngsters (to camp) during the war was quite something.' We were fortunate as young people that we had a minister (Br Edward Barker) and other church members, and later Br Ronald Lloyd, who worked hard to encourage us and to make us feel at home in the church. Sr Shaw also helped Br Barker when we started a Scout Troup.
We attended church services and Sunday School quite regularly, usually sitting in the back pews in church and not behaving as well as we should have done, but we were there, seeds were being sown. After morning service we would often go for a walk as a group, sometimes calling in at the 'little boys' (and girls') pub', the Vimto shop just down the road - not rationed! A Saturday night Youth Club started when, after many requests. the interim minister, Br Western, 'volunteered' to chaperone. That was soon followed by a Sunday night club: Saturday for dancing and games, Sunday for discussion to put right all that was wrong in the world. In the early hours of Christmas Eve 1944 a flying bomb came down not far from the church, but we still went carolling from midnight until around 5am Christmas morning. It was as a group that we celebrated the end of the war in Europe, dancing outside the Town Hall. The horror of the atom bomb was still to come but on 8th May we could celebrate and look forward in hope. Anne writes: 'So many lifelong relationships and friendships developed from the youth club ... For me, the Church was with me through all those years, loving, caring and encouraging. It was always there.'
A final memory! Very soon after VE Day the Provincial Board sent a letter to all congregations about the sad state of many of our churches in Germany and inviting us to collect food and clothes to help brothers and sisters there.
Some refused to help but the majority responded well and a good collection of food and clothes went from Westwood to support the appeal. Not even six years of war had killed the spirit of compassion and love to which Christ calls his people.
Br Fred Linyard
Ockbrook
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