大象传媒

This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by Jas from Global Information Centre Eastbourne and has been added to the website on behalf of Mr Cawley with his permission and he fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions

In Liverpool 1941 when I was 15 years old I worked for a medical company called Evans, Lesher and Web, which was in Seel Street off Hanover Street in the City Centre.
My job was to check the cards on the staff time clock system.

On my way to work on the morning after The Blitz, I saw Liverpool city burning. Almost every building was ablaze. When I arrived at my job in Hanover Street it was one mass of rubble.

I stood shocked with hundreds of other workers waiting for instructions. Finally we were told to go home and wait until all the fires had been put out, which took over a week.

Shortly after a letter arrived at home instructing me to go to another branch of the company in Wood Street. I was to report every day at 9 am and after 3 months my employment with this company ended.

Shortly after that I got my call up papers for the Merchant Navy. I travelled down to Gravesend in Kent and did a 6 months Merchant Navy Training Course. This was to prepare me for life on the ships.

During the training course I had a very narrow escape. It was August 1944 and I had a weekend pass. I was staying overnight at a youth hostel and as it was a nice summer evening I decided to go for a walk. I had only gone a couple of yards when I saw a Doodlebug land on the youth hostel building.

I didn鈥檛 hear the bang just a whoosh wind that picked me up and sent me flat on the ground. When I picked myself up there was dust everywhere and when I looked back the building had gone!! I spent the night in an air raid shelter and realised that my decision to go for a walk that summer evening had saved my life!!

When I completed the Merchant Navy Training Course I returned to Liverpool to find a ship.

The one I joined was over the other side of the river, a ship called the Eastern City, which belonged to the Reardon-Smith shipping line based at Cardiff.I joined this ship on 30th October 1944 and was with it for 6 months.

With the Eastern City I sailed out to the Med and on to Port Said and into the Suez Canal continuing on to the Red Sea, then on to Aden. The journey continued into the Indian Ocean to Karachi, India where we unloaded the barges and ammo.

Then on to Bombay, after leaving there, across the Indian Ocean to East Africa, and around the Cape into the South Atlantic and over to Brazil which was a neutral country.

After staying at Rio Santos where we had some football games with the locals; we left on our way back through the South Atlantic. As the war was still on we had to keep a good lookout for enemy ships.

My second trip was on The Photinia,from South Shields on 24th April 1945. This second trip on the Photinia was in the last convoy across the Bay around Gibralta.

On the Photinia I sailed into the river carrying barges and ammo to meet a convoy out in the Irish Sea. At that time we had to keep in convoys because there was still danger of enemy u-boats and e-boats attacking ships. We were heading for The Bay of Biscay.

As we got near Lands End there were more ships which made you feel safer although the war was nearing the end in Europe now, we went on into the Bay and I was told we were going east, as the war with Germany was nearly over. My older brother Peter was in Italy and also moving east, of course he would be going over land through Persia.

I then travelled into the Mediterranean to Toulon in the South of France to were there was a lot German prisoners being held by the French Liberation Army. From here I headed agross the Meditteranean to Algiers .Here we heard that the war with Germany was over.

We arrived back in the River Mersey and the welcome sight of the Liverpool skyline. What an experience!

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