- Contributed byÌý
- Lancshomeguard
- People in story:Ìý
- Laura Grimes
- Location of story:Ìý
- Liverpool and North Wales
- Background to story:Ìý
- Royal Air Force
- Article ID:Ìý
- A4216448
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 19 June 2005
This story has been submitted to the Peoples War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Laura Grimes and has been added to the site with her permission…
When the war broke out 0n the 3rd September 1939 I was seventeen and living in Liverpool.
Liverpool was very heavily bombed during the war and eventually we moved to a large house after three of the previous houses where we had lived had been hit by bombs.
I joined the WAAF and made an application to become a balloon operator. We maintained the barrage balloons, enormous hydrogen filed balloons tethered by steel ropes. The idea being that they would prevent the German planes from swooping down low. They looked enormous on the ground but quite a lot smaller up in the sky.
Later I was made redundant from this job and went on to be a flight mechanic, later going to Hawarden air base in North Wales.
The blitz in Liverpool was terrible many people lost their homes or were killed and injured. I remember a wedding party where forty people were all wiped out one night after a bombing raid; not a happy memory.
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