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´óÏó´«Ã½ WORLD WAR TWO STORY 2004

My name is Sarah Carmichael[Sadie] I was born Sarah Murray on the 3rd December 1927 in the cellar of 19a China Street Everton Liverpool, we moved to number 25 when I was three weeks old.

When the war broke out I was twelve years old. We had to collect our gas masks from Great Nelson Street. We had to bring them to school every day, by this time I was attending Roscommon Street Secondary Modern.

I loved school, it was lovely getting away from the drudgery of the house, being the eldest girl I was always busy working at home and looking after my brothers and sisters, Mam was always having babies 10 in total.

When the sirens went off we would all have to go into the air-raid shelter, which where built in the street. These where pre-fabricated structures with two doors, one was right opposite our front door. These were supposed to be safer than the old houses we lived in. Every one had to go in after tea in the evening.

Everyday after school my friend and I had to brush out the shelters and make them tidy for the next night. My Mam was more frightened than anyone I ever knew, the bombing made her shake all night long. She sat on the bottom bunk with a babe in her arms as usual [the bunks where three high].

The air-raid warden came often to tell us of any news of the bombing. One night he said that Sheriff Street had been hit [Next Street to ours] my friend Nelly Carr lived there, he said he had been helping to get the people out. My friend survived but her sister had been killed, she had been sleeping on the top bunk, they said there wasn’t a mark on her, but she was dead.

Most people mainly children were evacuated during the war, but our Mam wouldn’t let us go. I didn’t want to go anyway but I was sorry afterwards because it would have been like a holiday and I’d never been away before.

The schools were empty, there was only about ten of us left in our school so we had to go to a house in Shaw Street for our lessons.

Every Friday after school I went to the gymnasium classes at the Methodist Church in Great Homer Street. I also had to go to Mrs Doherty’s corner shop to pay the weekly grocery bill, she always had a knife in her hand for slicing the bread [our lads always tried to make Mam buy Wheatsheaf ready sliced bread because there was a free banger gun inside, but she never did!] Mrs Doherty gave me a sweet for paying the bill on time, and then the bombing started without the sirens going off.

Mrs Doherty was eager to shut the shop; I ran home, it was only about 40 yards away. Mam was getting the kids ready to go into the shelter we were in the lobby when the front door blew in. A few streets away a land mine had been dropped, Money Pennies shop on the corner of Rose Vale had been hit. The rubble and glass was every where, the lads collected shrapnel and swapped each other for the best bits.
My Dad was in the Army so Mam received a proper wage and family allowance for the kids, she was better off financially.

When Mam was due to give birth to our Kenny in 1941 she went to Aunt Lil’s in Huyton, by the Bow and Arrow. She went in a lorry from Low Hill with four of the kids. She told my older brother Frank and I to hire a hand cart from Portland Place. It was ½ crown and ½ crown deposit to hire for the day. We had to put a singe bed from home on the hand cart and take it up to Huyton so our Mam could have the baby. It was a long way and hard going but it was nice in Huyton. Aunt Lil lived by a farm the kids were made up they had a pond. But our Frank and I only had time to have something to eat, because we had to get the hand cart back before five o’clock, or else we would lose our deposit!

I left school when I was 14 and started work on the Monday morning at Walkers Tobacco in Scotland Road on the corner of Dryden Street next to Cranes. I was very happy there. My friend and I Emily Duckworth went dancing at the Majestic in the afternoon of ‘D-Day’ we had heard on the wireless that it was the end of the war. We walked to St Georges Plateau it was brilliant, everyone was singing and dancing there was music everywhere!

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