大象传媒

My grandmother, Doris Thompson (nee Hill) died three weeks ago but I know she would have loved her remembrances of the war read by others, which is why I'm writing this. They are perhaps not that exciting but they were very real and she was rightly proud that she 'did her bit'.

My grandmother lived in Southdale Rd, Wavertree, Liverpool during the blitz which for Liverpool was two weeks in May 1941. She told me that for those two weeks she hardly slept or spent any time at home. She worked at the Automatic Telephone Company on Edge Lane which became Plessey's and is now Marconi. During the war production switched to aircraft instruments and, as one of the first female draughtsman, her work was of great importance and as a result, fairly intense.
During the blitz, my grandmother and her mother spent their nights in a shelter near the Picton Clock, a local landmark in South Liverpool. Nearby Garston docks took the full brunt of the bombing, as did the docks up and down the Mersey and my gran remembered spending what where basically sleepless nights listening the bombs whistle down. At 6am, when the all clear sounded, they would emerge and get home as best they could.
One morning, my gran got home to find that the house next door had gone, flattened by a direct hit and that their neighbours shelter, which my gran had been invited to sleep in had gone too. Also gone were the entire family. My gran said she could never work out why her and her mother hadn't sheltered with the neighbours only that she could remember being adamant that they should use the public shelter.
My gran said it was always a horrible journey home, never knowing whether their house would still be there. Happily, it always was. Then, it was a question of nipping in, having a wash, changing your clothes and going straight out to work.
After work it was the same but in reverse; get home, get changed and get down the shelter as darkness fell and the sirens would start again, heralding another night of bombing.

Later on during the war my gran joined the Auxilary Fire Service or AFS and would spend her nights on top of tall buildings in Liverpool watching for incendiary bombs and other fires. She told me that she was trained to recognise the sound of enemy bombers by the noise of their engines. German bombers had unsynchronized engines which meant that they gave out a throbbing noise rather than the steady drone of British 'planes whose engines were synchronized.

She also told me that in the early morning, mainly in 1943, 44 and 45, she would see hundreds of American Flying Fortress bombers from the nearby base at Burtonwood. They would circle slowly above Liverpool, gaining height before heading off toward mainland Europe. She said she would look up and think how brave they all were and then say a little prayer that they would come back. She never once mentioned how brave she was herself.

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