大象传媒

In September 1939 I was of 13,000 women and children to be evacuated from Bootle. I was 7 years old and travelled with other school children and teachers from St Monica's school to Southport. We were taken to Norwood Road school hall where a billeting officer gave us refreshments and a brown paper carrier bag with string handles containing a tin of corned beef a packet of biscuits a bar of chocolate and a tin of milk. I was allocated with my cousin to go to the home of Mr and Mrs George Alexander Young who was a colliery owner and their home was a lot posher than the one I was used to. Carpets and velvet curtains,satin bed covers abounded and a daily help. Both of them were very kind to my cousin and I and we were treated particularly well, George used to take us to Birkdale Golf club and pretend we were his daughters home from school as he didnt have any family of his own. Even though we had scouse accents nobody questioned his word. He was a wonderful man,I lived there until the spring of 1940 and because it was rather quiet regarding air raids at this time we returned home to reality. I was at home during the May blitz of 1941 when of the 17,119 dwelling houses which then exxisted 2,043 were totally destroyed and a further 14,000 were damaged. In 507 air raids 460 people were killed and 1,886 were injured.
My father was in the merchant navy away from home so my mother was in charge and when the sirens went we all went into the anderson shelter in the garden. Sometimes we went to bed in the shelter before the raids started.

We lived next to Walton Prison which was bombed one night and we could hear from our garden the prisoners screaming. Years later some bones were found when they were renovating the Prison Hospital. It was reported that these were prisoners lost during the air raid.

As it was getting very dangerous living in Bootle, the education authorities decided to evacuate schoolchildren and I was sent to Herefordshire to a place called Mansell Gamage, to live with the Rollings family, with my sister Rita where we had a wonderful life in the countryside on the estate of Lady Letice and Sir Richard Cotteril. My memories of her Ladyship was of her riding in the parkland on a white horse, to a town child this was like a scene out of a fairytale. They gave their house over to the Canadians who made us most welcome to parties and had sent with the Red Cross some lovely summer dresses. I stayed there for about a year and came home in 1942.

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