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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Meg Harrison and has been added to the website on behalf of Jean Backhouse, with her permission and she fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I was married in 1935 and at the start of the Second World War I was 26 years old and had a son of eighteen months. My husband worked for the Corn Exchange and because his work involved the handling of grain supplies shipped from Canada and the USA he was exempt from being called up unless a suitable person was found to substitute for him. He worked long hours, including a lot of night work. The Corn Exchange was bombed in the earlier part of the war. The ex-presidents of the Exchange then had to hold their meetings in an old pub — it was called The Slaughter House.

We lived in at this time in Anfield in a semi-detached house. Because there was an underground spring in the garden we were unable to construct our Anderson shelter so we put a car seat under the stairs inside the house and it was there that I would put my son once he had gone to sleep in the evening. We were all given gas masks and even my son had one. But it was almost impossible to put a gas mask on such a small child. Sometimes my son would wake up during an air raid. I can remember him saying to me: ‘Don’t worry, Mummy, it’s only land mines dropping,’ — in other words ‘light’ bombs.

Liverpool suffered very badly from German raids in the earlier part of the war. Worst of all was during May 1941 when there were eight nights of bombing in a row. It was never reported properly. Liverpool nearly got wiped out. There were 600 people killed by a 500lb bomb — it fell on a shelter in Aigburth near a cinema — many of those killed had just left the cinema.

I remember during one big raid there were two goods trains standing in Lime Street Station; one was carrying foodstuff, including margarine and the other was carrying TNT. The latter train was hit and the other train caught fire. The driver of the train carrying TNT drove out the station before more damage could be caused. Some of the burning debris landed in our garden. He was a very brave man. He survived and was awarded the George Cross.

At the top of our road lived some southern Irish families. They said they were not at war with Germany and they used to leave their lights full on at night. This attracted the German bombers. A group of us signed a petition to Lord Derby to ask him to tell Churchill that we need more planes to protect Liverpool. One day in September 1941 — it was around 6pm and quite light — I was in the garden, and so were my neighbours. When we saw four or five planes coming over, we waved to them, thinking they were RAF planes and that our petition had been answered. Unfortunately they were German planes and they released several 25lb bombs on us. Our house was flattened. Luckily they were only ‘light’ bombs — if they had been heavier, we would have lost our lives. My sister-in-law had a wonderful Anderson shelter and we walked there carrying my son. But before doing that I had to go back for my fox fur which I had had for Christmas!

We then rented a house in Hoylake - we felt it would be safer there but even here we were not exempt from planes unloading bombs on their way back.

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