大象传媒

I was 14 when the war started. I remember when the blitz started. I lived in Wallasey, Merseyside. My brother was in the army and had joined before the war and was one of the first to get sent to France. I remember him coming home on 48 hours leave to say goodbye to my parents, me and my brother. He was taken prisoner in Belgium. Word came that he was missing and a while after, we had a letter from the red cross to tell us he was a POW.

I remember my gas mask in it's cardboard box. One day the sirens went of at dinner time. Me and my brother ran quickly down the street to the house. One German plane came over and dropped some bombs. The raids persisted for about a year. They usually started about 5 in the evening until about 5 in the morning. We spent that time in the anderson shelter but after a while we got so used to the raids we didn't bother with the shelter. Our house was near the naval and merchant docks and the mills, which got bombed frequently and were always on fire but they never hit any of the ships. They did sink some ships in the Mersey though and you could see the mast sticking out of the water. Our house was badly damaged. One night my brother who was in the navy came home on leave. He came home about midnight and we were woken by a German plane - you could tell by the engine noise. The plane dropped a bomb and damaged the factory next door which collapsed on our house. They had to get ladders to get us out. We were then moved out into some flats. We rebuilt the houses as fast as the Germans could knock them down. We were then moved back into another house in the same street. The raids were terrible and many friends were killed. There was a house hit about 2 streets away. The mother and father were killed but they found their baby in bed still alive.

Towards the end of the war I was drafted into the infantry. I was sent to Europe. We landed at calais which was flatenned. The allied army was moving about 25 miles a day. I crossed the Rhine. I was in Dusseldorfe when the war ended. We passed through Belsen after that. We were looking for SS in hiding. We went to Milan and met German soldiers who didn't event know the war was over. When we told them they were relieved.

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