大象传媒

I was 12 years old. I lived 3 minutes from Victoria dock gate, Birkenhead, really close to the docks. It was a full gone conclusion that we were going to be bombed. I was evacuated in 1939 鈥� Conners Quay, North Wales. I was only there for 12 months, so homesick. It was only my first trip away. There was bombing every night, we lived in a terraced house, my friends lived in the end terrace. Agnes, my friend, and me lived next door to one another. He reads Red Stad and Red Letter when the bomb dropped. The fire place blew out 鈥� we were on the floor 鈥� luckily we were not burnt. Run into the lobby and the door flew off and hit my shoulder. We managed to run into the air raid shelter in the street, my mother didn鈥檛 realise it was me because we were covered in soot!! My father had been on fire watch and came in to see if we were ok. He was in a terrible state. They converted the local swimming baths to a first aid post and my father took me there. The doctor sorted out my shoulder, as he was finishing a land mine dropped in the wood yard street opposite on Prize Street. I got shoved under the table and all the glass came down. I always remember a girl called Agnes/Margaret Hart 鈥� brought her in on a stretcher, she was covered in blood. Then we went home, all the windows out and the roof was gone.
Houses were like GOLD鈥�. Friends of mine told me about an empty house in Liverpool. They wanted 拢10 for the key. I went home and told my mother and then went back to the Billeting Officer and told him what had happened. The government must have given the key money and we got the house. When we moved in with a few bits and pieces my mother started crying. She thought Liverpool was a foreign country!! I said why are you crying, there鈥檚 no gas cooker the fire isn鈥檛 working. So she gave me 9 old pennies, 9 pennies an hour to hire a handcart. So I ran down to Birkenhead, off Cathcard Street, opposite St Peters Hall. I got the handcart and went to our old neighbourhood and workmen asked me what I was doing and I said I had come to get our cooker. The workmen said, 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 just take a cast iron off the wall.鈥� The men sorted out the pipe work, lifted it on to the handcart. I was also minding my 7-year-old younger brother. I pushed it up the hill to Hamilton Sq, walked past the shipyard on New Chester Road and the men were very kind, they pushed the handcart along. I got to Greenland Station and it was impossible, one step forward and one step back! We were living in Liverpool house for two years then we moved back to Birkenhead. But one house back, we stayed there until I was married in 1946. Still bombing in all those years but we had an Anderson Shelter. One day I woke up and heard an air raid siren, I woke up my mother and she was saying Hail Mary鈥檚!

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