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I was born in Liverpool in February 1938, so I was only eighteen months old when second world war broke out in Liverpool 1939. We lived in Hawthorn Road near marsh Lane in Bootle Liverpool, which was to the north of Liverpool. During the bombing in Bootle we lived in an Anderson air raid shelter in the backyard of our house. We lived in this shelter for some weeks as it was unsafe to go into the house because of the constant air raids. During this period our dad was unable to get home from his work in the Clarence Dock power station in Liverpool. He did his work during the day and home guard duties during the night. One night he did get home, but he had to walk miles through a heavy air raid. He eventually arrived in the doorway of the shelter, and his home guard tin helmet was hanging in two pieces and a jagged piece of shrapnel balanced on the inner webbing of his helmet. Mum and Dad had provisions in the shelter, but we were quite cramped, there being four of us children and my Mother. We children ranged in age from my youngest sister, a baby in arms born in March 1941, to my oldest brother Bill who was six. The shelter was self sufficient and don’t ever remember going hungry.I also have a memory of seeing my brother sitting in a tin bath in front of the fire place, covered all over in soot from the chimney caused by the blastoff the bomb.

After the terrific pounding that Liverpool and Bootle endured in May 1941 from enemy bombers, we, as a family, had to move away from Bootle to the neighbouring district of Kirkdale. Bootle had become untenable due to the devastation, and we also had the danger of unexploded bombs. The only means of transport available for the move to Kirkdale, was the coal delivery mans horse and cart. I have this memory of sitting next to the driver of the cart. The coal man, whose name was ‘Cokey’, and looking between the horses ears as we plodded our way along the road to my grand parents house. Whose house was in Wykeham Street in Kirkdale. Our grandparents had already had to move from the Formby area.

I started school in 1943 and we had to carry gas masks with us everywhere. There were lots of air raid drills, and in my first year of school we had to be put to bed in the afternoons. This temporary dormitory was in the part of the building which was designated as being reasonably safe from bombing. I remember there were rows and rows of camp beds to sleep on. Liverpool and Bootle suffered heavily in the bombing and it became quite common place to see the desolation of bombsites, and to have to walk to school amongst emergency piping and other such paraphernalia. Our brother attended school in 1940 in Bootle, but he only attended for a short time before the school was completely destroyed by the bombing.

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