大象传媒

I was born in February 1934 and was 5陆 years old when war was declared in September 1939. We lived in Fazakerley(a suburb of Liverpool). Our house was close to a main railway line that was a link between the Liverpool docks and the ammunition factory a mile away. This meant the railway was a target for the German aircraft to bomb during the blitz.

Our main form of transport were tramcars which ran on lines in the middle of the road by our house. Before the war my parents were friendly with the drivers and conductors who worked on the trams.

Mosy air raids happened at night and if the trams were still running they had to stop. When the air raid siren rang out to warn us of the approaching German aircraft the people on the trams would be stranded.

There was a large brick shelter on a piece of land at the junction of two main roads were most people made for. If we were asleep in bed we would be woken and taken to our shelter in the back garden. It was called an Anderson Shelter. It was a space dug into the ground and covered with aluminium sheets. the walls and floor were lined with wood and covered with old carpets. We had bunks to lie on and tried to sleep through the raids.

One of my most vivid memories was seeing the drivers and conductors passing small bags of tea and sugar to my mum. She opened the house for them and made them tea whilst the raid was on. Mum never came to the shelter, she preferred to stay in the house.

They passed the time playing cards around the dining table, or catching up with the gossip and listening to the radio. If the planes came too close they would dive under the table for protection.

Once after emerging from the shelter we saw a large hole in the garden. The windows had been blown our and the door was missing. We found mum, a driver and a lady conductor huddled under the table. Safe, but covered with dust and bits of plaster from the walls which had cracked. We later discovered that every wall in the house had cracks in them caused by a very large bomb that had exploded close to our house.

Fourtunately , it had landed in the farm fields close to the railway, narrowly missing the Cottage Homes, which were temporary houses for families left homeless when their homes were destroyed. The hole was so deep we couldn`t see the bottom. The holes in our garden were caused by shrapnel from the bomb. We were so lucky to have survived.

When the workman arrived to repair the house, the walls and the ceiling were painted in the most horrible green paint. To this day, 62 years on, I still have a dislike for the colour green. The colour brings back vivid memories of that particular time of my life.

Thankfully all of my family survived and we enjoyed many years in our house. The Anderson Shelter became a "den", for my two younger brothers to play in.

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