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I was born in 1931 in Wallasey, Cheshire on the river next to Birkenhead, across the river from Liverpool - both major ports, shipbuilding and repair centres.
In the run up to the war, I remember sitting in the living room hearing on the news excerpts from Hitler’s speeches. They sounded hysterical to me and, even though I couldn’t understand them, they worried me! During this time the expectation of war gradually increased. During 1939 we had to go to school with our parents to be issued with gas masks and there were posters and information about air raid precautions etc.
On Sunday September 3rd at 11 o’clock in the morning, everybody (including me) sat around the radio and heard Mr Chamberlain announce that we were at war with Germany. Ironically it was a lovely sunny morning.
Almost immediately the air raid sirens sounded. There was much consternation. Mum tried to put my gas mask on me, to much squirming and hollering from me, and gave up. Dad arrived home from work and gave me a quiet but firm telling off, explaining the need to keep calm and do what I was told.
Things were relatively quiet and nothing much happened. However school was suspended for a short time and a teacher called at the house about once or twice a week to give us some lessons but normality soon resumed. Mum was buying in supplies of things that would keep but would end up rationed — sugar, tinned foods etc. Blackout curtains were being made and so on.
Eventually the air raids began. They were aimed at the docks etc. in Liverpool and Birkenhead but a lot of bombs went adrift and inevitably landed on Wallasey - a sobering experience!
During one air raid I was stood under the stairs (the strongest part of the house — we had no shelters as yet) with my brother who was on leave from the RAF. He must have sensed my unease as we listened to the bombs whistle down and explode nearby. He said to me ‘Don’t worry lad, if one’s going to hit you, you won’t hear it coming!’ I’m not sure it helped but he seemed confident.
One evening, while it was still light, I went upstairs in the bath when I heard planes approaching. As the engines got louder, I realised they were German. You could tell by the sound of the engines - a regular wump, wump, wump. I leapt out of the bath and, without even grabbing a towel, I fled down stairs and into the living room where my sister and some of her friends were gathered — mortification!
An area of houses some 300 yards by 500 yards, two streets along from ours, was completely wrecked.
On another occasion, I remember vividly looking over towards Liverpool and Birkenhead to see the sky a dark, angry red as houses burned.
At this time, collecting shrapnel and the nose cones of exploded AA shells was a hobby and there was much swapping among the lads.
Things were getting hot, so my younger sister and I were shipped off (actually Mum took us) to stay with an older sister who was married to an airman stationed at RAF Martlesham Heath in Suffolk — a curious location for us. We actually lived in a bungalow in a country lane a couple of miles from the aerodrome and completely surrounded by open countryside. It was autumn when we arrived.
We had to walk a mile or so to a village school which catered for 5 to 11 year olds in the one and only classroom of a Victorian-type building. As time went on, frosts arrived, it was cold walking in but magical to us with everywhere covered in thick hoar frost. When we arrived we were greeted with a cup of hot Ovaltine. I can smell and taste it to this day!
As well as normal lessons, we had spells outside collecting acorns which were sent away for processing into some sort of food - our contribution to the war effort! For an urban child, this was all a new experience and much enjoyed. It was the first time I had come across bushels and pecks, that’s for certain!
One cloudy afternoon, as we were leaving school, we heard a plane flying low. Suddenly a German bomber dropped out of the clouds above us. The front gunner started firing. He couldn’t have been trying to hit us (he couldn’t have missed) but rather to put the fear of God into us. He succeeded! We all fled back into school in a panic. I was certainly at the front of the rush, only to remember my sister, and ran back to find her. I was later congratulated for my bravery in looking after her. Ho hum, if only they knew. I said nothing! Later the plane was shot down - it was trying to bomb four mills at Ipswich.
We were at home in the bungalow on one occasion when the Luftwaffe decided to strafe the runways etc. at Martlesham aerodrome, which, as it turned out, were in line with us, so we sat apprehensively against the wall under the table listening to the aircraft roaring over and the chatter of canons and machine guns until it was all over.
Probably as a result of this, we moved into a house in Ipswich itself. In the centre of town was a car park where RAF Queen Mary’s (long low loader trucks) used to park up. They carried parts of wrecked aircraft, more often than not German. Strangely enough they were often left unguarded so we could climb all over them and we did. The characteristic smell of dope and oil etc. still stays with me.
At this time someone must have decided that the move down here was not such a good idea after all. We were recovered, taken home and immediately shipped to live with an aunt and uncle in Gatehouse of Fleet in Kirkcudbrightshire in Scotland. On the whole the 18 months to 2 years spent there turned out to be a happy time.
I didn’t immediately make myself popular. On a foray into the surrounding countryside, I came across a pheasant’s nest with a clutch of eggs in it. Being an unaware townie, I promptly collected them and took them back and presented them to my horrified uncle, who put me right in short order.
He was janitor of the local school and also a wood-cutter on a local estate. I spent idyllic summer holidays with him, riding on his crossbar up into the woods in early morning with the other men and spending the days with them. They would build a bonfire from the branches they had stripped from the trunks of trees which they had felled. We had sandwiches at lunchtime and they brewed tea in a billycan. The water came from a stream. A mixture of tea and sugar was poured into the cold water and the can thrust into the bonfire on a long stick. It only took a very short time to boil to give a very characteristic brew!
I was treated with some contempt by some of my fellow pupils at school. History was taught on the basis of iniquities inflicted on the Scots by the English and the lesson was always the last of the day. To make matters worse, it was always concluded with a patriotic song (Scots were hey, Johnny Cope etc.). The bell would go and I, being the only Englishman in sight, would have to flee for dear life to avoid the consequences of past iniquities.
Many happy hours were spent in the school garden where we grew most of the vegetables and soft fruit for the school kitchen. Picking time, when the latter were ripe, was great since they always figured on the dinner menu as sweets.
Once I had to go to pick up two sheep’s’ heads from the butchers. They were duly skinned and split on the counter in front of me - a whole new experience for me! They made very good broth; there wasn’t much wrong with school dinners in Gatehouse, in spite of the war!
About this time (1942-43) the American forces started to come into mainland Britain via Stranraer, driving in hugely long convoys of trucks. Gatehouse must have been a natural breakpoint. The convoys stopped in the village, although they were so long that the head and tail were well outside it.
The accompanying dispatch riders would congregate at the village clock tower on their enormous motorcycles and show off to us in a very friendly way, roaring round on them and regaling you with their tales of the great US of A. Many of them were (of course!) related to our screen cowboy heroes, Tom Mix, Hoppalong Cassidy etc!
I well remember a young Master Sergeant patting a small anti-tank gun that his truck was towing and telling us how he was going to sort out the kraut tanks when he got over there. I used to wonder about the poor chap when he did meet them. The Americans were very friendly towards us and certainly generous with their candy.
By 1943 the raids on Merseyside had finished and I returned home for the last time. The local devastation was enormous and made me realise how lucky I was to have missed the worst of the raids. My times away had been beneficial in many ways. I had had many new experiences, many happy times and learnt a lot.

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