大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Simon Parnell on behalf of Harry Irvine with his permission.

I went to the Astoria cinema in County Road. One night "enemy action" came up on the screen. You could either go or stay to the end of the picture. I decided to go. I came along County Road. The Ack-Ack guns were terrible....not a soul in sight. I came to Spellow Lane were there was an underground men's urinal. I was nearly going into it, but decided to go home as it was only a couple of hundred yards or so. I got home and went into the shelter. The shelter was a reinforced cellar. When i got up the next morning I heard the news that the urinal took a direct hit. So I was very lucky.

In Index Street a couple of streets away they had a parachute mine dropped on them, it destroyed half the street. Then there was an ammunition ship in Brundswick dock which got a direct hit. The ground shuddered and the plates from the ship were found in Stanley Park. There were incendiary bombs dropping all around us.

I used to go to work from Kirkdale Station. One morning they got a direct hit on the line outside the station, so we had to go in by bus. The look of Lord Street, and the surrounding area, it was devastated. During the blackout we had to put up boards at work, because of the height of the windows, and work in near pitch-darkness.

There weren't many cigarettes, banana's and things like that. I used to get home from work around 6.30pm just in time to gollup my tea and get down the shelter. And there we had to stay until 3.00am in the morning. Most nights were the same. Wave after wave of bombers coming over. My brother was evacuated to Ormskirk.

I volunteered for the Royal Marines in 1942 when I was 18 and a half. I really wanted to go to sea, but there were not many places on ships. I did a parachute course at Ringway Airport. I joined the Marine Commando's in 1944 and was posted to Commando Group HQ in the Defence Platoon.

I went out to India to Lake Beal near Bombay (Mumbai), to take part in the landing of troops in Japan, but this idea was shelved as it would cause too many casualties. In the meantime the hydro bomb was dropped on Japan, this caused the war to be over. I went on an aircraft carrier to come back to the UK.

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