[West Ender]

My dad was an aircraft engine inspector at Bristol Aircraft Co. when I was born (it's on my birth certificate - it says, peacetime occupation "printer's engraver at artificial silk manufacturer"). Before I was born my mum worked, for a time, at the ROF at Guide, Blackburn, making fuses for bombs. Both were targeted by the Luftwaffe but, due to excellent camoflage, weren't ever hit.

I believe there was 1 bomb dropped on Oswaldtwistle, which hit the library. Dad used to say that the German plane was unloading its bombs ready for the flight back, a common practice at the time, and aiming for Oswaldtwistle moors. The general belief that German planes always deliberately targeted civilians was not, strictly, true though my mum used to tell me a harrowing tale about a fighter-bomber straffing the street in Guide and shooting the coalman and his horse, a tale which always made me cry.

The pow camp at Stanhill was only used for Italians until about 1943. By the time I was old enough to have any knowledge of it, it housed German pows (I was born in 43) and I have vague memories of them as they used to go in my auntie's bakers shop in West End when I was very small. They were "the enemy" but, to me, they were just nice men who talked with a strange accent.

I've never heard of a V1 or V2 dropping locally. They didn't have the fuel to get this far North and mostly dropped on London and the South east