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I will tell you a little story about when the war was on; I was 11 years of age. We lived in a quiet part of Liverpool then, we lived in a place called Norris Green, a very nice little community. We used to do a lot of swimming in the family, but when the war started we couldn’t go to the baths, because the Army took over, so that was the end of the swimming for a while until things got organised. Then we remember the Army having camps locally, Stonebridge Lane near where we lived.
We did have a lot of air raids but we weren’t bombed as much as some parts of Liverpool. The excitement being a child, we would say ‘I wonder where the shrapnel is now, I wonder if we can have some’

Those memories, are they as if it were yesterday?

Yes, you still think of them, but when you look round you realise that we were very, very lucky. When you see two old men of their age walking round this place today, that they were at war, and the likes of them and thousands of others saved us, they saved us, and we are happy and we should show them respect for what they did for us.

And what would be your message to the younger generation that hasn’t got a clue about the war?

Well, I don’t think their parents would be of an age where they would be in the war. Maybe their parents were children themselves when the war was on or they would have told them more about what was going on.

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