大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Lin Freeman of Radio Derby CSV on behalf of Mrs Sonia Brown and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Wartime Memories

Three short stories

1.
We lived on the river Dee side of the Wirral and remember the night Liverpool had the very heavy raids [I think it was 1941] and it was on fire. We were sleeping downstairs and was in my green corduroy siren suit when my father, who was an A.R P. warden came running in, picked me up, took me outside and said to my mother 鈥渟he has to see this鈥�. Outside we had a clear view over the countryside and it was just like daylight the only difference being it was a great orange glow covering the whole sky. I asked what it was and he said 鈥渢hat is Liverpool on fire, it is a terrible thing and I hope you never have to see anything like that again鈥�

2.
We lived on the corner of a lane and the house opposite was partly on the other corner and partly on the road. My father was a builder and we were very friendly with the family who lived there. They had plenty of room in their garden and asked my dad to build a shelter for us all. A place was made for me to sleep when in there during night raids and we made ourselves as comfortable as possible. At sometime during these nights the other family used to send their maid into the house to make tea and the joke was that I only used to wake up when I heard the chink of the teacups. One night there were tremendous bangs which sounded as if they were just outside, but it turned out the Germans were aiming for the steelworks at Shotten on the Welsh side of the Dee [we lived on the Wirral side just over the border]. We often picked up shrapnel on the road outside.

3.
My father was first an A.R.P. warden and later in the Home Guard and during this time while the night raids were on our house was full of people brought in off the streets for cups of tea, they had come over from the Mersey side of the Wirral to drive around trying to escape the worst of the bombing. Even though I was small I found it very interesting meeting all these people and listening to their stories. We had a succession of evacuees from a young girl my own age to a mother from London with her toddler daughter who was going through the 鈥渢errible twos鈥� and ending with a nice middle aged couple who had a publishing company and brought me nice books. Also at this time because I was young my mother was not called for war work but as her aunt lived with us she was able to work in a shop - George Henry Lee - in Liverpool. She worked in the haberdashery department; sometimes I would go and meet her to travel home together. I used to sit on a chair at her counter and be quite fascinated by the variety of goods. One day a very large African gentleman came in demanding a bow tie. On being told none were available he launched into a terrible tirade against Hitler and the war because he could not get a bow tie anywhere at all. It was quite scary for a small girl.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.