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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Northumberland on behalf of Mr. Frank Reynolds. Mr. Reynolds fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions, and the story has been added to the site with his permission. It is written in the first person.

Although I have lived in Northumberland for many years, my accent immediately reveals to anyone I meet that I originate from Liverpool. My family lived on West Derby Road but as the Second World War started we moved to Ballantine Road at West Derby, which at the time was one of the outer suburbs of Liverpool.

As kids we had a wonderful time during the early days of the War. We collected shrapnel after air raids, and if you found a piece with a serial number or, better still, with a Swastika on it, it was worth a tremendous amount when it came to swapping things with other children. We would watch the German air raids and look for fallen incendiary bombs that we could extinguish with sand bags.

Although an Anderson shelter was available to us, we preferred to stay in the house during air raids, hidden under the stairs because the shelter often flooded. The family was under the stairs on 26 April 1941 when a parachute mine dropped just outside our gate, it was very close to the house. At that time, my Father, Thomas Reynolds, was away from the house on fire watching duties, so the family comprised my Mother, Elizabeth who was more commonly known as Lizzie, me with my four brothers and sisters still living at home, plus another sister and her husband who had been bombed out of their home only the week before. When the mine exploded it decimated a whole stretch of housing on Ballantine Road, including ours.

I lost both brothers in the explosion, Mother had a nail through her thumb, two sisters were seriously injured and my third sister, Kathleen, had a miraculous escape. My eldest brother, Joseph, was nineteen years of age and he was at home on leave from the King鈥檚 Regiment (Liverpool) having won his leave pass on the toss of a coin with his best mate. He was blown to bits but his funeral was with full military honours. My other brother, Harry, who was fifteen years of age, was also killed. My sisters Alice and Teresa were seriously injured while Kathleen was blown out of the house and into the garden but she hardly suffered a scratch!

As for me, I lay where I was with my eyes full of muck and dirt, with a beam laid across me such that I was trapped. Eventually, I heard people and saw lights and fires. The smell was awful and it remains with me whenever I think about that day. When the beam was lifted and I was released, a young woman took me to an Anderson Shelter about a quarter of a mile away where her son was. He was about the same age as me, almost eight years old. Having got me there she left immediately, to see if she could be of further help to the rescue teams. Several high explosive bombs had either failed to explode or they were fitted with delayed-action fuses, and one unexploded mine was being worked upon by bomb disposal experts.

It was not long before Father returned from his fire-watching duties, following which he spent the rest of the day checking what had happened to each of his family. Mother, Kathleen and me were soon collected together and taken to stay at my Grandmother鈥檚 house. At that time, none of us knew that Joseph and Harry had been killed. The bombing of Liverpool at the end of April and throughout May1941 was truly horrific. One abiding memory I have is of anti-aircraft guns screaming all over the area, firing a few shots from one place before moving quickly on to another. I can only think, now, that there were not that many guns covering the city and that by moving them around quickly those in charge hoped to fool the Germans into thinking the city was better protected with anti-aircraft batteries than was the case.

The family returned to West Derby Road, to live with my Aunty Teresa but her house was already crowded with people bombed out of their homes, so we soon moved to live with my Aunty Ginny at Huyton. We stayed there for quite a while before, through my brother-in-law who served with the Royal Welch Fusiliers Regiment, Mum, Kathleen and me were evacuated to Colwyn Bay, North Wales. We were there for about six months at the end of which time we returned to one of the Closes off Ballantine Road. Much later and once it had been re-built we were able to return to our original house.

Throughout the war years I had very little schooling. Where we lived anybody could take children in, supposedly to teach them. We were issued with pencils and paper to write on but few of the people who did this were qualified, so it鈥檚 not surprising that we didn鈥檛 seem to learn much from this approach. Thinking about it now, I suppose the people who did this were more akin to what, today, we would call child minders and, in that role, they fulfilled a useful purpose.

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