大象传媒

On 1 September 1939, two days before the Second World War broke out I was evacuated to Westhead near Ormskirk. I only stayed there for 15 weeks. My mother and brother George who was 4 years of age were also evacuated to Westhead, but they only stayed three weeks. My motherhad to go back to work as money was running out.

On the morning of 1 September, myself and all the other children walked to Kirkdale station with our change of clothes and gas mask. When we arrived at our destination we were given a bag of foodto gibe to the familywe were billeted with. We went to school in the sfternoon; the local children went in the morning. There was one girl in my class; I did not know that one day I would marry this pretty girl (Elsie. Elsie said that if any of the boys misbehaved they would have to sit with her. I never sat by Elsie, i was alwys well behaved.

During the war, we were lucky that our house was only slightly damaged in the May Blitz. On night when we returned to the house after being in the street air raid shelter i went into the house first. When i went upstairs there was a large hole in the ceiling and there was something protruding out of the linin box. I ran downstairs amd looked for Mr Rowson, who was our air raid warden. He said "stay in the shelter". When he came back he was laughing. He had a piece of stonw in his handwith the words in it "In Loving M". It was a piece of gravestone which had come from Anfield cemetery. The Nazi bombers were trying to bomb the railway line which was only two streets away.

The next gay, a neighbour, Mr Newbold also had a piece of gravestone which had the word "emory"on it, and the 2 pieces fitted together. We kept these pieces in our back yard for quite a while together with some shrapnel which most boys used to collect and swap.

As the war went on I got a job as a paperboy for a while. I was paid sixpence a week. Sometimes my customers had left there houses because they were far too damaged to live in.

There were a number of people killed in Index Street, which was next to my school.

the children of my area suffered a loss of education and when i was 11/12 about six children would meet at a house in Ludlow Street. A teacher came to help us with our education.

In the summer wewould go pea and potato picking which was organised by my school. One good thing we were paid for these expeditions.

After the worst part of the Blitz was over we retured to our school.

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