大象传媒

I was nine years old when war was declared and at that time was a pupil at Butler Street Council School. I can remember when we had our air raid drills, we were marched in a very orderly fashion to sit beneath the stairs with our gas masks, which were with us at all times. We practiced putting them on and off, the smell was horrible, and they made this awful rasping sound everytime you breathed in and out. Very soon the parents were urged to send their children to a safer place, and there were very few who didn't. I was evacuated to Greenaffield in Mold and billeted with a couple with two small children in a cottage with no water. We brought it up from a pump in the lane. It wasn't until years later that I discovered that the people had to take evacuees. I thought they just did it out of the kindness of their hearts. This was the start of the so called "phoney war" when despite all the defences and preparation, nothing much in the way of bombing was happening. As I was very homesick, my parents brought me home after six weeks, however, not long after the raids began in earnest.

Every night my father would take us all down to an underground shelter, not very far away. It wasn't very nice and had a smell about it. Lots of people used it and after awhile everyone had their own place and would bring little bits of things down. Later, someone brought a wind-up gramaphone, so we could have a little sing-song. We could still hear the sound of the bombs overhead and we knew if the noise stopped, then the bomb was very near when it dropped. When the "all clear" sounded, usually the next morning, we would emerge and find debris, rubble, and houses missing in the middle of a row of terraces which could look like a few teeth had been knocked out of a giant's mouth. Later, we children would go looking for shrapnel. For awhile, the raids stopped us from going to school, and we had what was known as home teaching. That was where a small group of children would go to a parent's house and a teacher would give the lessons there. I remember we had boys at our house. Once again, I was evacuated to Caernarvon, a little place called Trevor. I was taken by a childless couple, to a bungalow right on the beach. Althought the bungalow was quite modern, we had oil lamps and an earth toilet. My mother would send me a small amount via a postal order every month, but before rationing, there were no sweets to be had, as once a shop had their quota, it was first come, best served. The word would spread like wildfire and before you could get there it would be sold out. The same applied to alot of other goods. Therefore, we would buy Oxo or cough sweets from the chemist, but I did buy quite a few books, one which I still have, "Little Women." We had lovely teachers. Unfortunately, we lost two. We put on shows and we were involved with the local church. I still have the bible to commemorate my stay. I was to remain there for two and a half years. When I returned home, the worst was over. I went back to Butler Street School, leaving at the end of 1943 to start work as a clerk in the Royal Liver Insurance, which was later demolished and is now the Royal Liverpool Hospital. Therefore, when war broke out I was a small child and when it ended I was a young lady (or so I thought). On VE Day, the mood was infectious, the feeling was one of jubilation, after all the privations that people had gone through, although rationing still went on for a number of years. Everyone gave thanks for peace.

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