大象传媒

In May 1941, the bombing of Merseyside became a Blitz! One Saturday night we awoke to see the night sky once more aglow, pulsating, the light of massive fires burning in the city centre. The air throbbed with the sound of German bombers flying overhead, wave after wave relentlessley closing in on their target, hour after hour they came, then in the early hours of morning an eerie silence until the'all clear' sounded. I thought about my sister Norah, a young nurse, probably somewhere out there amid the ruins tending to the wounded.
News came that the city centre was devastated, a group of us lads decided to go into the town to find out what had happened. A tram took us to Penny Lane, that was as far as they could go. We carried on by foot, it took us about 3 hours to get to Renshaw Street and there, before us was the devastation. Lewis's was a black shell and still smouldering, that wonderful large department store where we had spent so many happy times as young children at Christmas time. We went to the grotto to see Father Christmas, we always got a parcel wrapped in coloured paper, they cost a 1/-. You could pick what you wanted, I always got a clockwork train which had a circle of lines and 2 carriages. Afterwards, we went upstairs to a restaurant where an orchestra played. We enjoyed Christmas dinner and mince pies.
Now we gazed at the blackened walls, high up on top of a wall was a flag-pole, on that flag-pole was a tatty Union Jack fluttering in the hot breeze! It's a pity nobody took a picture.
It wasn't possible to get further into town, the firemen were still fighting the fires and the police had closed all the roads, all the streets were strewn with fire hoses, rubble and bomb craters. Later I saw Lime Street which looked a real mess with bomb craters. Three cinemas had been wrecked and a fourth one damaged. Blacklers store was completely destroyed. The raids lasted for more than a week. A huge area around the Queen Victoria monument was a wasteland but the monument remained intact. Hundreds of people killed and wounded. The damage all over the city was immense, dockside warehouses had all gone, the acrid smell of smouldering ruins was everywhere. The beautiful shopping arcades on Lord Street were gone, the list was endless. Memories of wartime Liverpool.

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside鈥檚 People鈥檚 War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

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