大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the Barnsley Archives and Local Studies Department on behalf of Mary J Atkinson and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions."
At the beginning of the war my brother volunteered for the RAF. I was very sad when he went away, I thought I would never see him again; he came back awaiting his posting! He became an officer pilot, serving at several stations and eventually ending up in Burma.

We spent most of our nights in the Anderson shelters (in other words a hole in the ground). One early morning my sister Sheila and I woke up and saw an airman鈥檚 arm pulling the curtain back. We both thought it was a German parachutist when suddenly my brother鈥檚 face appeared, he had come back home on leave from the RAF.

With us living in West Derby, Liverpool the Germans dropped a lot of spare bombs around our area. They unloaded them before flying back home.

Opposite our house we had a school with a lot of playing areas with soft ground. This particular evening my father was going on shift at the Tate and Lyles factory. As he was going out he said, 鈥済o into the shelter鈥�. He put cushions on the large round table, 鈥渟omething is going to happen tonight鈥�. We did not go into the shelter we stayed under the table. We fell asleep my mother, sister and I. Suddenly we woke up it appeared as though the walls closed in on one another. My mother looked like Al Johnson with the black face. The soot had covered her from the fireplace. The Home Guard came in. They did not knock on the door because the door was in the landing and the windows and roof had gone. This was due to a land mine.

Broadway is still in Liverpool at Norris Green. My brother was on leave and was waiting for a tram and he was talking to this soldier about things in general. George (my brother) decided to walk instead of waiting for the tram. When he left it got a direct hit with a bomb. He was very lucky. Hopefully the soldier did the same.

My Grandfather, aged 91 years, stayed with us during the war. On one occasion we tried to get him in the air raid shelter, which was very difficult. He looked up at the barrage balloon and said those B??????? up there and I said get in the shelter. He thought it was Zeppelins.

These are some of my memories from the war days.

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