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NetaSylvester

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER

Blitz — 22nd December 1940

I have a very vivid memory of that time, which I have never forgotten. I was just 6 years old and lived with my parents and my brother in a pub on the corner of Vauxhall Road/Silvester. Street, Liverpool. The Brewery had decided to have an air raid shelter built in the back yard of the pub, but due to shortage of materials for the roof there was a delay in completing it. My parents decided to convert one end of the cellar as an air raid shelter because it had been recently reinforced with iron girders when the Brewery had built a private entrance to the living quarters. The cellar was made quite warm and comfortable, as we would be spending every night down there for the next few weeks.

It was early evening on 22nd December 1940, about 6 o’clock, when the sirens sounded, my parents and my brother and I went down to the cellar. My mother had taken a young woman with a small baby into the cellar with us, because the communal shelters were very cold and damp and had no heating of any kind. The raid started almost as soon as the sirens stopped their eerie wailing. We were lying in our beds, listening to the raid outside. We could hear the planes flying overhead and the occasional burst of machine-gun fire. Bombs whistle as they fell, and we wondered if we were going to be next. The raid seemed to go on forever, when. Suddenly the whole place shook; the bomb had found its mark! I don’t remember feeling scared; I suppose I was too young to think of fear, more bewilderment. I have no idea how long we waited, but after the dust had settled, we could hear the voices of the Air Raid Wardens outside shouting to us, they weren’t too sure if we had had time to get down to the cellar, so were running up what was left of the stairs which was just above us. I suppose in the dark and the confusion, they hadn’t realized that it was pointless - there was nothing left at the top! There was just a large hole where the main part of the house had been. The bed my mother was in had a large brass bedstead, which was lucky for my mother, because as they were going up the stairs, they were pushing the crumbling wall down onto my mother, fortunately the bedstead was holding the wall up long enough for her to get out of the way and into the coal hole nearby, which turned out to be our escape rout

The Air Raid Wardens pulled everyone to safety, my father and I being the last to get out. He wrapped me in an eiderdown and carried me up the street to the school hall, a distance of about a quarter of a mile. It seemed to take ages, as he kept dodging down the area steps outside the houses to avoid shrapnel and being seen in the light from the star shells that were falling. I remember thinking how bright it was for such a dark evening. I could hear machine guns firing. When we finally reached the school my father sat me on my mother’s knee and someone was bandaging my face, I had been hit by shrapnel I still have the scars to this day.

I have thanked God every day of my life, because, if the outside shelter had been completed, the story you have just been told would not have been written. You see, the shelter was completely destroyed! The communal shelter that the young woman and baby were prevented from going to, was also destroyed and many people were killed.

Mary Keating January, 2000

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