大象传媒

After arriving in Liverpool from Guernsey, a local train took us to St Helens, and we were coached to Allanson St junior School, where we were allocated a camp bed in the gymnasium.
It was now very late in the evening, and the W. V .S. were to provide breakfast in the morning.
I was collected a few days later by Mrs Friar and her daughter Betty, and taken to their three bedroomed terraced house near the school.
The mother and father had six children, two were married, and the other four lived with them, making five with me.
It was a tight squeeze, but we managed.
There being no bathroom we bathed in a large wooden tub in the shed, where the water was boiled for it in a large copper in the kitchen.
I was very well cared for, regularly scrubbed and well fed, the mother being an excellent cook, particularly with the meagre rations allowed.
I attended Allanson St Junior School, and St Peters Church Sunday School, where "Dicky" Diamond was the vicar, who had been a missionary in Africa, and told us bloodcurdling stories about it.
I was eventually confirmed by the Bishop of Liverpool.
The air raids became very regular as the war went on, with lots of bombs dropping around the house, making us dive under the stairs for protection. Normally, it was impossible to get seven people under the stairs in the daytime, but when the bombs dropped, it was dead easy!
Houses were blown up and people killed, while the barrage balloons and searchlights did their best to keep the German bombers away.
One night a bomb dropped thirty yards away from the front of the house, and one at the back and we were fortunate that it had not been a direct hit, although the wooden front door was found to be peppered with large shrapnel splinters the following morning.
The crash and thump of the bombs and the shuddering of the building, with the reverberation of the explosions made my teeth rattle in my head, as I stemmed my fear, and wondered if my family in Guernsey were faring any better.
Not knowing, of course, that my father had been evicted from his home by the Germans, who turned his bungalow into a Sick-Quarters unit, for the injured Todt workers, digging and blasting the St Saviours ammunition tunnels, under the church and cemetery.
I went on to Parr Boys Senior School, and became proficient in many subjects, attended the school of art, played rugby for school, was a long distance runner and sprinter, and long jump school champion.
After the duration, now fifteen years of age, I returned home in September 1945.
I was so pleased to rejoin my family, and to see my maternal grandmother return safely from Laufen and Biberach, the German prison camps, or Internierungslagers, as they were called.
1 was not understood by my family, because of my strong Lancashire accent! Yet 1 did manage to say to my paternal grandfather, and 1 quote, "I know now, what war is, Grandpa!"

M R Sangan 31/01/05

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