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In September 1939 we lived in Aigburth, Liverpool – that is to say my mother and father, maternal grandfather and younger brother .

My Grandfather had just retired from Ellerman Hall Line having been a Chief Steward – in fact it was through him that Mum met my Dad. Dad was a serving Chief Officer with the Hall Line his current vessel being the ’City of Bath’.

In October, less Grandpa, we evacuated to be near relatives in North Wales. They had a farm and they found accommodation for us in a Sports Hut near the farm at a village called Buttington – it was great fun whilst the weather was mild ie oil lamps, oil stove and candles but that soon palled as it got colder and we took lodgings at a terraced cottage in Gungrog Road Welshpool at the start of 1940.

We lived with a family – he was the baker for the Co-operative in Welshpool and I clearly remember him coming home every day with ‘white hair’: The wife was a real country woman – pigs were kept in a pigsty behind the cottage together with hens. Her proud boast was that if a German parachutist was to try and get-in he would be greeted with a shovelful of red hot coal from her constantly burning fire and/or boiling water from the kettle on the trivet - there was absolutely no doubt that she meant every word.

Dad came to see us there when he had leave and had to suffer the indignity, which we were quite used to by then, of having a bath in front of the fire – Our landlady adding to his discomfort bringing hot water as and when needed. I believe that after his second visit and a relatively quiet period in Liverpool, his modesty won my mother over. We headed home having been evacuated for less than twelve months.

Austerity was much more in evidence in Liverpool – no constant supply of fresh eggs and freshly baked bread. Instead we had queues and often the meat ration was tins of corned beef. Schooling had suffered in Welshpool and even over such a relatively short period we were lagging behind and later when the school was bombed and once weekly ‘sitting room at home classes’ took over it was going to prove difficult to make-up lost ground.

Christmas was enjoyed as a family in 1940 but without the trimmings of fresh tangerines, bananas and suchlike; although Dad did manage to supplement our larder particularly with Tea and I still remember the unique taste of ‘broken orange pekoe’ from what was then Ceylon.

Then in May ’41 it all started – Dad was home – and life started in the Anderson shelter. Mum was a bit tardive about getting down to the Anderson one night, eventually she decided not turn over but joined us and an Incendiary came down shortly afterwards landing on the pillow were her head had rested!

As boys we enjoyed ‘the excitement’ but mother and in particular father were terrified and all of us got to identify which planes were ours and which were German. We also became quite adept at placing were bombs were about to fall and we could tell by the noise or whine the pitch at which they were travelling and how close to us they would fall. If the whine suddenly stopped you knew it would be near, on the other hand landmines caused a lot more devastation in terms of blast and broken glass but came down rather more gently.

The damage to Liverpool and in particular to Wallasey on the Wirral was massive but in a sense the Germans had missed their target because although Docks and Shipping suffered great losses, the civilian population seemed to have borne more that their share.

Well life goes on and we seemed to have put-up with the inconvenience. Dad went back to sea and then on 2nd December 1942 the ‘City of Bath’ was torpedoed approximately 100 miles south-east of Trinidad. Six crew members lost their lives, five Lascar sailors in the engine room and the Chief Steward Mr Moon, ironically it was his birthday.

My father was in the water and when he had nearly surfaced his head caught the keel of the lifeboat causing little injury at the time but which we believed developed into Meniere’s disease later in life – he died in 1953.

They were all picked-up by the U S Navy who arranged for Dad to be flown home very quickly – he arrived wearing a yellow survival suit and a bandaged head. He was mentioned in Despatches and wore an Oak Leaf sewn on to his medal ribbons.

A short time after the Coventry blitz we welcomed Topsy to our home. Neighbours of ours in Aigburth had gone to work in Coventry at the start of the War and Topsy was their little cross-haired terrier. During the bombing she had escaped and was lost for three days – she was clearly traumatised but with loving care and attention she almost got back to normal – unless there was thunder when she would be on my mother’s knee so quickly that we did not see her move.

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