大象传媒

My mother,Elizabeth Deda....now 83 years of age has many wartime memories.Her most vivid was being attacked by a German fighter plane as she was walking home alomg West Derby Road one lunchtime when she was about 17 years old.Unperturbed initially by the sound of the plane she was pushed to the ground by a male pedestrian as a hail of machine gun bullets ploughed into the ground and surrounding buildings.He undoubtedly saved her life but she did not ask his name.
Mum's name was Elizabeth Ashburner,known as Betty to her friends.She worked for a short time at Rootes Factory in Speke until her severe asthma made it necessary for her to leave.She worked as a riveter on the Halifax bombers and would love to know if anyone remembers her from that time.She met my dad,a Polish airman at a dance at the then White House in Calderstones Park,Allerton.He spoke very little English at that time but enough to ask her to dance.Romanced blossomed and they were married for 54 years before he died in 2000.
Mum also remembers the Clint Road School disaster when she spoke to people trapped underground in the school cellars when she got off the bus on her way home from work, who were later killed when the boilers exploded.But I think it is the simple things she has told me which help me to create a picture in my mind of what it was like in Liverpool during that time.Buying sweets on the way home from work and eating them sat on the steps of her home watching the guns firing into the sky and running into the shelter when the sirens sounded, often full of rain water coloured red by the dye from the carpet put in there by my grandfather.Seeing strips of clothing hanging from tree branches the morning after a raid and couting the gaps where houses had been demolished the night before were common daily experiences
She remembers no sense of fear.It was the excitement born of ignorance of the danger.She remembers also helping her younger sister to collect schrapnel and storing it in a tin.Mum was one of nine children,although two had died before the war began but all her remaining family survived the war.Sadly she is now the only one of her family left and many of her friends have passed away also.I hope that someone reading this may have known mum during the war years and will contact me using this web site as it would make a lovely lady in her senior years a very happy woman.

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