大象传媒

I was spending my day as I did many times at my Nan's row house in Birkenhead during the 70's. I sat in the front room with my brother's playing with military toys. We all loved the British military toys, they were a welcome departure from the cheap green plastic army men at home in the states. My uncle who was running a Courage pub in Wales had arrived to visit us. He was intrigued by the toys, especially by the marine spitfire and a Junkers bomber we had picked up in a market in London. He told us of the raids that swept through Birkenhead and Liverpool. Some damage was still visible even in the 70's and every once in a while an area would have a "UXB" sign when someone would unearth a bomb in their back garden. He then told that one day a German piloted had parachuted into a neighbors garden and was severely beaten by a few of the senior scousers with their gardening implements. My dad (in the home guard, later in the royal navy), uncle (served in the merchant marines) and two of their friends from the home guard stopped them to bring him to the authorities for interrogation. The pilot then begged for cigarette from the less tolerant of the home guard, a punky kid to young to really serve was his description. He gave the pilot a cigarette, pulled out his lighter and reaching out to light the cigarette decided to strike the pilot with a jab to the lips lighter in hand. A few quick kicks to the home guardsman's rear end and a couple slaps to the head, from his compatriots, they were off turnover the prisoner. My uncle asked me if I had seen "where the bomb hit the house?". I said no. He said that maybe a week or so after the pilot, the family was in the breakfast room eating a meal that my Nan scraped up as to be special since my uncle was ready to go to sea within the next day. He took my brothers and I up to my Nan's bedroom and lifted each one of us to see the top of the quite substantial wardrobe. It was very charred and a hole and some splintering were notable within the wardrobe. Yet the wardrobe hid its tale well from the common observer. The charred area had taken place during and air raid. The whole family was downstairs leaving the table at the time, since the sirens sounded. They heard the sound of the bomb crashing through the ceiling as they left the house. It turned out that the bomb had been an incendiary that hadn't gone through all the stages of detonation. My family was blessed that day with their lives.

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