大象传媒

I was 15 when the war started and because the school was evacuated and I did not want to leave my rather poorly mother, my father gave up smoking and sent me to a private school for twelve months.
So in 1940 I started as a shorthand typist in Thos. Rigby and Sons Ltd, a subsidiary of J Rank Ltd, whose office was on the corner of Fenwick and Brunswick Street in Liverpool. So it was fire-watching on the roof at weekends and learning to use a stirrup pump and running a savings group at home. At one time it was MTB week-or Motor Torpedo Boat week, another time it was Wings for Victory week. I would go around the houses in the street and people were only too keen to buy savings stamps to help the war effort.
Every morning in the office, views were exchanged as to where the bombing had been the night before and who had suffered the worse damage, and although the books, ledgers and typewriters were taken to the basement every night for safety the office did not suffer any damage. In fact, we did not know what real damage was until 1941.
I lived in Litherland and used to travel by rail into Exchange station every day but, eventually the station was blitzed, so then I caught the bus until Stanley Road bridge was blown up. So off to work on the overhead railway. Until that was bombed. Eventually I walked the five miles back and forth to work until my father bought me a bike.
Where once we had looked out from the office onto a lovely India Buildings and Corn Exchange and I would take the monthly mortgage payment to south Castle street, after the May Blitz, the Corn Exchange had gone, India Buildings were burnt to the ground floor and South castle street with the wonderful Custom House had virtually disappeared. The view improved. We could see the river!
Our home, although battered, without windows and almost roofless- still a better cover for relatives who had lost everything. All my aunts had lost their homes in Bootle and were lodging in Southport. So we put people up where and when we could.
Somehow, with rationings, restrictions and difficulties with transport, we staggered on until in 1943, I stared my nurse training at Walton Hospital in Liverpool. It had been rather difficult getting released from Ranks as we were in a 鈥榬eserved occupation鈥�.
Training progressed and in 1944 we started getting convoys of Red Cross ambulances from France. They usually came at night and I remember being called from my own ward to a completely empty one and being told by the night sister to get the urns turned on and the sterilizers boiling. Then ambulance after ambulance would arrive and wounded men from the front would be bundled into the empty beds. They were usually covered in plasters or bandages. We only had two resident surgeons who would work all night and the best part of the next day to get the plasters off, take those who needed surgery to theatre and sort out the others. Our job was to help get the plaster castes off and when they did come off they were full of maggots, but the wounds were very clean, the maggots having had a feast on the way across from the front. The smell was dreadful and lasted a long time.
On another occasion we received a convoy of our soldiers, all ill but repatriated from Germany. Unfortunately, most of these men were too ill to be resuscitated and despite our best efforts of trying out the new 鈥榳onder drug鈥� of penicillin, administered by intravenous injection from a large litre bottle, most of them died. One boy I recognised as being the son of our local butcher and his family was never reconciled with his death and tended to blame the lack of care rather than a death which was inevitable due to natural causes. Perhaps he would never have developed nephritis had he gone into the army and been captured.
One night I was sent to 鈥楻鈥� Ward, which was full of German prisoners of war with a British soldier guarding the ward doors 鈥� quite unnecessary as none of those boys were in any condition to flee, nor did they want to. The strict rule was 鈥榥o fraternisation鈥� and one nurse was dismissed for chatting in a friendly manner to one boy. The rule did not apply to the senior doctors who chatted happily to the officers in the side ward.
VE Day, I note in my diary was celebrated with a nice cup of tea in my room! VJ Day was a bit more enthusiastically celebrated with a dance at midnight in the 鈥楻ec鈥� 鈥� But what was an atomic bomb? We had never heard of such a thing.
My father eventually got the house to rights, but we had to have our two beautiful cats put to sleep because they were so terrified of the noise of the bombs, and it was increasingly difficult to feed them. The night our neighbour was killed, the local midwife, and her sister injured, was particularly harrowing. The family who lived next door and had never gone to the shelter decided to go that night and that was when their house came down.
Dad, who had served in the 1914-18 war was always away at nights with the auxiliary fire service, working on the dock fires and although he worried about my mother and me, he always went off with the crews because that was where his duty lay.
Despite the long hours, the harrowing work, the heartbreaks (my friend worked on a ward full of men with only one leg between them) reading my diaries now, I find an overwhelming sense of normality 鈥� going to the pictures on my days off, seeing my friends, writing to my brother overseas and being infuriated with the pinpricks of everyday life 鈥淪ister wouldn鈥檛 let me off at 6pm for my evening until I had brushed the ward and drawn the blackouts.鈥�
I was thrilled when Dad could get me a packet of cigarettes or we could send money to India to my brother, courtesy of cable and wireless. Horrified to find we had stuffed marrow again for super and swore I鈥檇 never touch it again and never have.
So perhaps those of us who did not qualify for a medal or a seat with the veterans at the cathedral service but worked 60 hours a week for 拢1.28 (拢1.14p) a month for three years did our bit!

'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.'

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.