大象传媒

Prior to 1939 my family moved from Liverpool to a small bungalow outside Wrexham. I went to school at The Wern. At the outbreak of the war I was almost 7 years old. My father was a Merchant Seaman working on United Africa Company Ships, sailing to West Africa.

My first contact with the war (in 1940) came when a bomb was dropped, landing at the bottom of our garden and the blast blowing the glass out of the windows and causing other damage. Fortunately, that night we had been staying up the road with my grandparents. We moved in with my grandparents, at their cottage called Aberoey, before eventually moving back to Liverpool.

While at my grandparents the 8 day blitz on Liverpool took place. Why we figured 8 days I am not sure because some people say 7 days! In any case during this time my father came home on a short leave (48 hrs) arriving with a medium length parcel much to everyone's curiosity. What a shock when he opened it. The parcel was in fact an incendary bomb which had fallen on to the deck of his ship and had not exploded! He had decided to save it as a momento of his travels and had carried it on the train and bus back to Wrexham. The following morning my grandfather dug a hole about 6 foot deep and buried the bomb. I think the war had a strange effect on people at times...

Another time we recieved a telegram saying my father was coming home. When he arrived we learned he had not long been released from a Prisoner of War camp in Dackar, French West Africa, where his ship the M.V.TAKORADIAN had been impounded on the orders of the French Vichey government of the time.

After my father's release he went back to sea and was torpedoed twice. Once on the Atlantic off South Ireland, the ship was the S.S.KUMASIAN (1941)
and on the second occasion, off West Africa while serving on the S.S.LAGOSIAN (1943), which I believe went down in 4 minutes. That ship was sunk by a torpedo from U Boat U159.

Shortly after this time we moved back to Liverpool to Armscot Close, Liverpool 19. During our first 12 months back home we spent quite a few nights in our Anderson Shelter. (A blast shelter.) By this time I was 8 years old.

Our neighbors were a Mr and Mrs Green and their daughter, Mary. Mr Green was a Home Guard. I remember his daughter Mary getting permission to show me her father's revolver, (not loaded) which she did under her mother's supervision over the garden fence. The Green family had a Morrison Table Top Shelter in their living room so they did not have to go out of the house during an air raid.

When the Amerians came, the children were often begging for chewing gum. My mother had warned me off, so I refrained from begging, BUT there were times when soldiers would come over and OFFER me chewing gum. On such occasions I could accept gratefuly and with a clear concience.

My memory of Liverpool's damage is of smouldering buildings (after a raid for example), piles of rubble and the wide open spaces after the rubble had been cleared. Of course there was Lewises and Blackleys (forgive me if spelt incorrectly) which took direct hits. If I remember correctly Blackleys managed to keep trading by using a series of smaller shops.

Where I lived during the war we had horse drawn carts. We also had a tram system that WORKED, and an overhead railway, also now sadly gone. And the steam ferries; the smell of steam and grease and the rattle of the gangways and mad stampede of the passengers leaving the ferry...

I would like to finish by putting something on record which I have never seen mentioned except in a book on Palmline. There is a photo in that book of the S.S.Guinian carrying over 3,600 troops of the British Expeditionary Force rescued from St. Nazaire (1940) along with some women refugees and children and babies. I just hope the officers and crew got the recognition they deserved. In the picture you cannot see an inch of deck since there were people even sitting in the lifeboats.

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