大象传媒

LIVERPOOL 1944-45
In January 1944, my father was transferred to Liverpool. This was a whole new world. It had been 3 years since the Liverpool Blitz, but only the most essential work had been done to restore the city to its normal life and miles of devastation and bombed buildings greeted us everywhere. The children I went to school with related stories of their experiences in the blitz, even part of our school building had been destroyed. It was a traumatic experience for a l4-year old just up from the country. I could only admire the sheer courage of the people who had picked up the pieces and got on with their lives with true "Scouse Grit".
Liverpool was full of Americans at this time and Aintree Racecourse, near where we lived, had been turned into a huge arsenal to accommodate all their equipment. More and more troopships arrived daily at the docks and there was a constant stream of convoys transporting men and munitions to Aintree. We guessed (correctly!) that this was the build-up to the invasion of Europe. During April and May we became aware that all this stuff was travelling the reverse direction. Day and night there was a constant stream of traffic back to the docks. We all realised that something was happening at last and then, on 6th June, we awoke to the news we had been waiting for. The Allied armies were crossing the Channel and landing on the Normandy beaches. It was D-Day and the invasion had begun.
In the weeks following D-Day, there were problems with the evacuation of the seriously wounded men back to England because of the Vl and V2 rocket raids on the South East coast. The Red Cross organised a fleet of hospital ships to bring the casualties through the Channel and up to the West coast ports. We often saw these ships moored at Liverpool Pier Head. All shipping during the war had been painted in dull, camouflage grey. The hospital ships stood out because they were painted white with prominent Red Cross markings. (Under the Geneva Conventions these ships were exempt from enemy attack.)
Some even more remarkable ships appeared in the Mersey early in 1945. Towards the end of the war, the International Red Cross had negotiated an exchange of severely wounded prisoners of war. This was effected through Sweden, a neutral country. Two Swedish liners, brilliantly painted in their national colours (blue and yellow) brought the POWs home. The smaller ship, the Drottningholm, made several trips, docking in Liverpool to land the British prisoners of war and returning with the Germans. The larger ship, the Gripsholm, docked first in Liverpool and then sailed on to Canada and the United States. Crowds of people turned out to see them sail up the Mersey, a heartening sight after the dull greyness of the war years.

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