- Contributed by听
- brssouthglosproject
- People in story:听
- A Liverpool Lass
- Location of story:听
- Liverpool; Tue Brook, West Darby
- Background to story:听
- Civilian
- Article ID:听
- A4294910
- Contributed on:听
- 28 June 2005
I was living with my family in Tue Brook, West Darby, Liverpool. The day war was declared we were on holiday in Wales and my dad took us home. He dug up all his prize carnations - they were worth a good deal of money - and he burnt them and planted potatoes.
Instead of going to school we had to go to a lady's house, because our school was near to a Power Station, and at risk. Then things got very bad with the blitz, and one day we all had to get out of our houses because there was a mine hanging in a tree, and we were all sent to the Salvation Army Hall in the middle of the morning. They were wonderful, they provided everyone with tea and toast. My father said to me: 'Go home and get your clothes' (they were drying in front of the fire). I crept under a rope and got to the house though it had all been roped off, and collected my little knickers and socks, and my dad took me to a shop, a little local shop, where we'd never been, and knocked a lady up and asked her would she dress me; and then he took me off to Macclesfield to his cousin, my Auntie Flo, and they were wonderful to me. I was about eleven, and they kept me about eighteen months until I was twelve and a half. They didn't have any children of their own, and they treated me well; after being a nobody in a big family it was wonderful.
One day my sister turned up to see me, and I went home with her, and I was so disappointed. My mum said, 'What are you doing here? Go to Flacks and get me 2lb of sugar'! I had been away for eighteen months and that's all I got. I was back to a nobody again.
I went to college and learned shorthand and typing. Got a job in a shipping office, surveyors for Lloyds of London. I was there from 1942 to the end of the war. I became a British Council representative to look after Displaced People, to go and make coffee and look after them. Some I took home to my mum. She was wonderful to them. She worked in munitions during the war.
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