大象传媒

This story appears courtesy of and with thanks to the Liverpool Diocesan Care and Repair Association and James Taylor.

The autumn of 1940 brought the first German bombs to Liverpool. The raids continued intermittently until, prior to Christmas, three nights of mass bombing destroyed many of the streets in the city. However it is the May Blitz of 1941 that is remembered by most people.

The time between May 1st and May 8th was the worst week of sustained raids on any part of Britain, as the German bombers tried to wreck the port of Liverpool. The city centre was devastated. Huskisson no.2 Dock was obliterated when the 鈥淢alkand鈥� was blown up and in Breckside siding an ammunition train exploded and wrecked an entire district.

Violet Gibbons, who was born in 1910, recalls the trauma of air raids in Liverpool:-

鈥淲hen the war broke out in 1939, everybody had to buy black curtains for the windows. The war must have broken out then, because in 1940, my son John was born in Ormskirk Hospital. Before I went to the hospital, we used to hear the aeroplanes coming over from Liverpool, right across and right through the evening. The husbands would come in from seven o鈥檆lock to half past. My husband had just gone away from the bed and seen the baby; in those days we didn鈥檛 have the babies with us, they took them into the cr猫che. John was about two days old, I think, and the fathers had gone out of the hospital, when all at once the air raid sirens went and we all sat up in bed and Sister was running down the ward. I had my legs out of the bed, we all said 鈥淏abies, babies!鈥� and she said 鈥淎ll get back into bed鈥�. She was a great big iron woman, you know! She said, 鈥淎ll the babies are safe, get into bed you mothers!鈥�. Then all of a sudden we heard this whistling sound, such a bang! I think we were all praying and anyhow, we were thinking of the husbands going through the main gate, you see, because the next day the Sister said a bomb had dropped on the main gates. When I came out of the hospital with my baby, I could see what had happened, all the gates had been knocked down. We got home by taxi and then later on there were more air raids and you could see the sky lit up towards Liverpool. My husband had to go into the Home Guard and he had to go round the country. He could shoot already because he was born on a farm. They were all given guns and proper uniforms.

By that time a lot of people were coming into Ormskirk from the air raids. They were all in different church halls you see. He had other men in the Home Guard to help look after all those people in the church halls, and give out tea and sandwiches. We used to make sandwiches, the women, we didn鈥檛 buy food, it was given to us by the government. You wouldn鈥檛 have thought there was a war on really. We lived right opposite a public house called the Red Lion; when women and men came out they used to dance and sing. And of course there was a little shop. My husband, and three old maids who lived in this little shop, they were disgusted by the way they carried on. I was myself, really, although I came from Liverpool. The old maids said, 鈥淚t isn鈥檛 right 鈥� they should be thinking of the poor men who are being killed鈥�.

Later on my husband came home from the farm and said 鈥淲e are getting a lot of prisoners of war鈥�. I thought, 鈥淥h heck. It will be awful with these prisoners out here鈥�. My husband said 鈥� Don鈥檛 worry, it will be alright鈥�. First of all, we had Germans on the farm, they had a big circle stamped across their uniform, they didn鈥檛 get any money, they got a chit or ticket to go to a shop to get what they wanted. Then we had Italian prisoners of war. Two of them sort of took to my husband.

By this time I had a little girl. The people next door, I don鈥檛 know whether they had children, I forget now, I didn鈥檛 see any children and they loved my two. They used to give me duck and hen eggs and they didn鈥檛 take a penny off me. I used to let them look after my little girl sometimes while I went out.

When the planes were going back to Germany, from Liverpool, the bombers used to drop all their bombs, to get rid of them. The aeroplanes would be lighter, to get away and they were dropping them everywhere. I think that was the day they dropped a bomb on Ormskirk Hospital. Well, we heard this terrific bang and my husband was out in the Home Guard. Next day his sister said the little wooden church had been bombed. We used to go there during the week. We all trooped down to see it, but we couldn鈥檛 see it, it was flat on the floor.鈥�

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