大象传媒

This is an interview with a lady who lives by me. Eileen is 74 years old and was aged 12 when the war started.

I asked Eileen about her family and their part in the war. Eileen replied that she had a mother, sister and a brother, her brother was ill and her sister went into the WRENS.
They lived in Bootle and she went to Bootle Secondary. They were taught Maths, English, Chemistry, History and R.E. Even through the war they still had fun playing games such as cricket, football, rounders, queenie I, ollies and kick the can. In them days the money was different and Eileen talked about shillings, halfpennies, farthings.
All the houses and buildings had material on the windows and these were blackout curtains so no light shown through. Eileen was talking about foods that were on ration and the queues that they had to wait in. They only had 1 egg per week, 2oz of butter, 4oz marg, quarter of tea, and 1oz lard, many foods were not on ration but the shops sold out of them quickly. Eileen鈥檚 face kept changing when talking about all this, one minute she was smiling, next she looked very sad.
Eileen鈥檚 house got bombed twice. There were no streetlights then but they all coped. Eileen remembers all the debry and people searching for either their belongings or people that were missing. It was very hard for her remembering but she was talking about how people pulled together, helped each other, laughed and cried together.
Eileen remembers the shelters, they were big brick buildings and some had lots of families in there and they all had their own blankets, pillows and some food. The other shelter was the Anderson shelter bit not many people went in as they were dirty, smelly and damp through the soil. They had sing songs like 鈥渋t鈥檚 a long way to 鈥渢ipparee鈥� and played games but this was more to keep out the fear of hearing the aeroplanes above and the explosions.
Eileen never got evacuated but all her friends did, they all lined up at the school and had name tags stuck on them. They all had to have gas masks and another bag to put clothes and sandwiches in. Eileen remembers some were crying and others thought it was an adventure. Many of her friends got home sick or their parents wanted them back so they returned home. Eileen loved to listen to the radio and it only had two stations, also the wind up gramophone with records of Vera Lynn and Max Bygraves.
It was said that the only way to get through the war was to have hope that it would end soon and all that went to war came safely home. Then a big smile came over her when she said that the best day ever was when the war was finally over.

Many thanks to Miss Karen Richards and to John Keane from Liverpool's Central Library

'This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by 大象传媒 Radio Merseyside鈥檚 People鈥檚 War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his / her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.'

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