大象传媒

This story appears courtesy of and with thanks to The Liverpool Diocesan Care and Repair Association and James Taylor

I wasn鈥檛 in any of the services during the war, neither was my husband; he was too old to be called up. I was in St. Johns, I was a founder member of the Garston/Speke division and we built a lovely hall, that鈥檚 all gone now.
In 1942, I got married; my husband was in the St. Johns, he used to go on duty when the raids were on in Liverpool, he went out with the boys in the ambulances, he saw more of the really horrific things during the war than I did. It was really sad sometimes, I think we had the first casualty in Liverpool, that occurred when a bomb was dropped on the churchyard in Halewood.
As part of St. Johns, we used to go down to the Pier Head we saw all the boats coming in with P.O.W.s from Singapore, prisoners from Italy that were burned with flame throwers. We used to help them with their babies through the customs onto the boats, and we used to board the hospital ships to give comforts out. The comforts were little gifts like fruit- oranges, sweets, books, things like that. The Japanese were wicked, but the lads used to get their own back, you know when they counted them in a long row, they used to run around and they鈥檇 have to count them again, so the Japanese never knew how many there were. They used to torture our boys out there you know, especially of the Burma Railway, so many died building that, not many came home from there. It was sad going down to the Pier Head and seeing them all injured, burnt and tortured, but sometimes when they were repatriated to the centres of Liverpool, some of us used to see boys that they thought had been killed, coming over to them, oh they were really thrilled! One of the centres was in Ranleigh Street, in Central Hall. Sometimes I can hardly believe I did all that.

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside鈥檚 People鈥檚 War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.