- Contributed byÌý
- ´óÏó´«Ã½ Community Studio Wrexham
- People in story:Ìý
- Beryl Morgan Jones, Ruth Pownall
- Location of story:Ìý
- 'West Derby, Liverpool', 'Liverpool', 'Abermorddu', 'Caergwrle'
- Background to story:Ìý
- Civilian
- Article ID:Ìý
- A7248152
- Contributed on:Ìý
- 24 November 2005
Beryl's story as told to Nan Pickering. Beryl has read the transcription and is happy for it to appear on the website..
My name is Beryl Jones. Probably better known in the Wrexham area as Beryl Morgan Jones as Beryl Jones’s are ten a penny! I was born in 1935 and when war broke out, in 1939, I was four and a half.
We lived outside Liverpool in West Derby, and I can remember standing round the radio- His Masters Voice radio- and the announcement of war came over, and my father raised his hand, and that meant, you know, ‘Don’t make a sound while this is on’. We listened, and then he switched it off and he said ‘That’s it May, we’re off’. I had no idea what that meant, but we packed, and my mother and father, and my sister and I, went to town, caught the ferry over the Mersey, and from Seacombe Station, caught the train to Caergwrle, where my mother’s sister, Aunt Ruth, Mrs Ruth Pownall, was waiting. My sister and I went to stay with her. I went to school in Abermorddu in 1939, and quite a number of Liverpool children were evacuated there, and we became labelled as ‘The Liverpool ‘vacees’ and the local children, first of all, sort of separated themselves from us, and they used to smack the girls, and I remember being caned with garden canes, all the way from school to where we lived at Trefaen. But after about six months, this nastiness disappeared and we fitted in, and I was there until the end of the war. Well, in the main I was there. Every time my mother came to visit, which was weekly, or fortnightly at the most, I would have a screaming session and a bit of a paddy and insist they’d take me back to Liverpool, which they did on a number of occasions, and on many of these occasions, we went straight in to the Liverpool bombing.
On one occasion I remember being on the ferry boat, early evening on the River Mersey, when the siren went, and an air raid started, and the planes were coming down, and firing at the ferry boat, and anything else in the river. And I can remember that ferry boat distinctly, because it must have been one of the old ones brought back into service. I can remember the red plush seats and the brass bars and fittings, and they said ‘All the women and children in the saloon’ and the men had to stand on the deck and hide themselves wherever they could, because the planes were coming down and firing and I remember screaming, hanging on to this bar, shouting ‘I want my daddy, I want my daddy!’ but we landed in Liverpool and got home.
Another time I went back, and I remember running round Bidston station and kicking over a can of petrol, and there was uproar because if the petrol had gone up, the station would have gone up. We caught a Number 10 tram from the Pier Head in Liverpool, and we had just passed TJ Hughes’ and were out on Prescott street, when the siren went. And the tram was full. And I’ve never seen a tram empty so quickly. Within seconds, the conductor, the driver, and everybody else had disappeared, and my father took my mother and I to Prescott Street Police Station. He was a police man in Liverpool. He’d left Mold in the twenties and joined Liverpool City Police. And we spent the night in a police cell, and I have a distinct memory of the police man there giving my mother and I tea. And it was in those massive pint or maybe two pint tin mugs, and it was horrible, and of course in the war we had condensed milk and it was sickly, and I remember being sick all over the police station!
But as soon as the raids started, there was no choice, and we’d be back down town, over the river, and back to Caergwrle. And I have many memories of going over on the ferry, sometimes going on the underground, and all the underground stations, they were covered with bodies, with people going down there to sleep at night, and you had to climb over legs and arms and babies, to get in or out, or on a train. One of the nasty moments, we were.. I don’t know whether we were coming in to Liverpool, or going out.. but my mother and I were in James Street station, and the lifts in those days were very large cages, and we went in, and it was absolutely packed, and within seconds, the siren went, and the building at the side was hit, and we just went down the shaft with a big bang, and landed at the bottom. And we were there for hours. In fact, a couple of men took charge of the crowd inside the lift, and I remember them putting all the small children, including myself (so I must have been around five), on the shoulders of the men, to stop us being crushed. And then, eventually, they brought ladders down, and we went through a very small hole in the roof. They put me in front of a gentleman who’d tied his mac. I was sort of facing him in the front, you know piggy back style, and they’d tied his mac round my back, and I had nightmares, a gentleman came up and he was rather.. all I can remember was this big fat face with piggy eyes, and he pointed a finger and said ‘Don’t you move, girly, cos if you do, you’ll come off the ladder’ And I went up the ladder in front of this.. I had no idea who he was.. and there were police men, and fire men and nurses at the top, ready to take us off, and by the time they got us out, I was in such a state that I didn’t speak for two weeks. And when I did, I stuttered and stammered very badly, until I was about 11, when I went to High School, and it just stopped.
On another occasion, Liverpool was being badly bombed, and I’d had another screaming session in Abermorddu, and had to go home with my mummy. Liverpool was being badly hit, and my father took me down to put me on the train at Seacombe, and as we were going through the centre of Liverpool, the bombs were dropping, and we were in Water Street, just not quite near the Pier Head, and he ran into a doorway. I think it was at the back of the Cunard Buildings. A massive doorway, with big mahogany doors, and he pressed me against the doors and said ‘Don’t move. Don’t move.’ Of course, being nosy, and inquisitive, I had to have a peep, and all the way down Water Street, there was an army of rats. Big ones at the front, small ones at the back, and they were all in twos, just like an army, going down to the river. And he said, had we moved, they would have attacked us. But he pressed me against this mahogany door, and inside, it had been hit, and it was burning, and my hands were burnt on the inside, with the door. But one of the joys of going back and to to Liverpool was when I went back, I was always put in the guard’s van, and that was like Pandora’s box, nothing like a guard’s van today, there’d be bikes and pigeons and hens, and all sorts of wonderful things, and I’d be there with my two labels and my gas mask and a bottle of water. The guards were more or less Wrexham based and they all knew me, and my aunt was called Mrs Pownall, so I was known as the Pownall girl. They’d look after me until we arrived at Caergwrle, and Aunt Ruth would be there, waiting to take me back up to Trefaen.
I went to school in Abermorddu. It’s difficult to remember now, but I think there were ten.. maybe twelve.. children from Liverpool- evacuees- and we were immediately labelled the Liverpool ‘Vacees and the local kids, well, the boys in particular, took it out of us, but after a few months, we blended in.
When I was back in Liverpool, I went to Thomas Lane school. I remember going one day with my label and gas mask and the next thing, we were all, two or three classes, put in an army lorry, taken down town, and they were being evacuated through the Government system. I had gone privately, to an aunt. But they were being evacuated from Lime Street Station to Abergele. And my father heard about it. He rushed down to Lime Street Station and tried to take me off. I didn’t have a suitcase or anything. But the teachers wouldn’t let him on the platform. Fortunately, the trains, three or four trains, were full, and we were put back on a lorry to go to Exchange station, and from there, most of the children went up to the Lake District. And I can remember being on this lorry, with my father, in police uniform, cycling very quickly behind the lorry, and he arrived at James Street and managed to take me out before I was shipped up to the Lake District. Because, although I knew my name, we’d moved house at that time, to Newnham Crescent, and I wasn’t sure where I lived!
But in Caergwrle, I made lots of friends, had wonderful times. I can remember, in the winter, walking up to the Horyb.. we used to skate on the lake up there. We used to sledge from the Cymau, down the Cymau Lane, to Abermorddu. In the summer, we were down by the river. It was wonderful. We were never in! We were playing up the castle. I remember being taken with fright at the top of the castle, and they had to leave me up there and go and get the policeman to come and get me down. That was a laughing episode!
When I first left Liverpool, we packed up, and I just have a vague recollection of..we didn’t have a car, so we went on the buses, or the trams, and we went down town, and you could either go to Caergwrle from Lime Street or James Street to Bidston, or catch the ferry from Seacombe Station and catch the train from there to Wrexham. And I remember arriving in Caergwrle station, and my aunt was running up and down the platform, and it was dark. And yet the announcement that war had broken out was at 11.15, so we’d either taken a long time packing, or a long time getting there, but it WAS dark. I remember that. And then we walked up the road to Trefaen and we stayed there, my sister and I, but every time my parents came, I would have a screaming paddy and want to go back. But on at least half a dozen occasions we went back into serious raids. I remember once getting a taxi from Liverpool, which was a rare occasion, and the taxi driver went round about four or five streets in Everton, to get out to West Derby, and they were all.. covered in holes.. and one of them.. his whole family had been wiped out. And he was crying. And I remember pulling my mother to say ‘He’s crying mammy, he’s crying’, thinking my mother could help him, but she said ‘Leave him be, we can wait’.
To go in an army lorry into town was a regular occasion, and I can remember on one occasion, there were no buses, or trams, for some reason, and we had to go into a refuge van, and we were the first in the queue, so we went down, and we were overlooking .. you know, the bar across with all the rubbish, and we were leaning over all the rubbish, and by the time we got into town, I was being violently sick with the smell! But it was the only way to travel.
As I was saying, I stayed back and to, between Thomas Lane school and Abermorddu but, in the main, it was Abermorddu Primary School until 1945.
When the war finished, I think I’d been back in Liverpool probably about six months before, and I was going to school in Thomas Lane, and I can still remember walking around with the gas mask, and on one occasion, the only time I ever put it on was out near Bowring Park, and for some reason, I can’t remember why, but a warden came out, and we were all sort of pushed into a corner of the park and told to put on our gas masks. And that’s the only time I can remember actually wearing it.
It was difficult. Everything was on ration. But I don’t remember going short. My father had a wonderful garden, he was a very good gardener, and my aunt had a gardener, Old Johnson, and we had every vegetable and fruit. You name it, we had it. It was a wonderful garden. We kept pigs on someone else’s patch. Betsy was my particular favourite. And we helped feed them. So food wasn’t a problem at all. Even sweets. We had our share during the war. We used to stand on a wall at the back of the garden, and watch the planes going over to Liverpool, and then I used to have a cry, because I would think ‘My mummy’s in Liverpool’. But my aunt- completely different to my mother, but very kind, a wonderful lady- she took very good care of us. And in fact, a lot of people in Caergwrle remember me as Beryl Pownall, you know, surnames didn’t matter during the war, but they knew Mrs Pownall, and they knew I lived there.
But the scenes in Liverpool I’ll never forget, the stations full of people, especially James Street station when the lift went down, and we were there for about five hours I believe, and my father pressing me against the burning door, and my fingers blistered, but it wasn’t Germans he was hiding from, it was the rats leaving the burning buildings and running down to the Mersey.
There was one land mine near West Derby, at Swanside Avenue, and it blew all the windows in our house and at the neighbours, but that was the only problem where we actually lived. But of course, the centre of Liverpool took it very badly.
I returned to Liverpool when I was about 10- in 1944/45- but I used to go back to my aunt’s (in Abermorddu) two or three times a month. Having spent so many years there, and having made so many friends, I preferred it, and I was actually married from Trefaen, years later.
The war was an experience you don’t forget, but I wouldn’t like to go through it again.
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