大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War Site by Anne Wareing on behalf of Margaret Higham and has been added to the site with her permission..

I was 14 when the war started and I left school. I got work in a wool factory, but wasn鈥檛 here very long as the factory was owned by Germans who of course were interned. From there I went to the Coop Laundry where I stayed until the end of the war. We worked from 7am to 6pm every day for very little pay. It was hot, steamy, tiring work. We used to wash the heavy red army blankets, because of this we didn鈥檛 have to go and work in a munitions factory. Lots of ordinary people used the laundry in those days as well, so we were always kept very busy.

I lived in Norris Green then and as a young girl had lots of fun, we used to go to dances twice a week; walking everywhere in the blackout and sometimes getting a bit of a shock if you鈥檇 met someone in the blackout then saw them in the daylight the next day.

We weren鈥檛 far from Alder Hey Hospital and sometimes a few of us would go up there and see the wounded soldiers and take them cigarettes and what fruit we could get and generally try and cheer them up.

We had air raids almost every night and had to go down into the Anderson shelter which was dug about 6 foot down in the garden. I kept our Wellingtons lined up ready by the back door for when the air raid warning went off. It was crowded down there as there were 5 of us in the family and it only measured about 10 foot x 8 foot, with bunks around the side. We stayed until the all clear sounded in the morning then I would go off to work after being awake most of the night.

Not everyone had a garden to put an Anderson shelter in, so there were brick built shelters on the streets. Often these would be hit with great loss of life. I can remember the garage around the corner from where I lived being hit and cars being blown all over the place. And the railway also near us was hit badly and I recall going to see what was left of a train that had been blown away. We used to be able to see and hear the bombs dropping on Liverpool. People moved into Norris Green from Liverpool and lived with families as best they could, sometimes sleeping on the floor.

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