大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Three Counties Action at the John Lewis retirement club and has been added to the site on behalf of Jess Wood. Mr Wood fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

I was born in 1930 so I was 9 when the war started.

The first thing I can recall is going to my grandmothers house in Anfield, Liverpool and staying there over the weekend and unbeknownst to me they were having a siren practice. I was downstairs in the house and I heard the siren and I started to panic thinking we were going to be in all manor of trouble. So I ran upstairs, I grabbed my gas mask and grandmothers gas masks and ran down the stairs. The strings from the gas masks got tangled round my legs and I fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom, landing on the hallstand. I felt so stupid when my grandmother explained what is was, I didn鈥檛 know any better. It must have been my first memory of the war.

We were living in Liverpool and at night I can remember everybody going out to the Anderson shelters and all the neighbours used to go out at the same time, waving to each other as they went. It was actually quite funny, as they would shout goodnight to one another. Some had rigged electricity into the shelter so they were able to have coffee and tea. We even had an electric fire to help keep us warm.

I remember standing with my father and looking into the distance and seeing the huge glow of the center of the city and the bombs dropping. There was a plane that was shot down and it fell onto Lewis鈥� in Liverpool and it was on fire.

I remember how I felt when the submarine 鈥淭he Fetus鈥� launched over at Camel Laird Dockyards in Birkenhead. The Fetus went on trials on the Mersey and it had local dignitaries on board when it sank. Sadly I think some people died.

When I was 11 I joined a boys singing group called Steffani鈥檚 Silver Songsters and the famous Ronnie Ronalde was the head boy. We worked in theatres all round the North of England, but we never came down South.

When I started I was very young and na茂ve. We had a matron and we had to carry on schooling. She was meant to teach us but she didn鈥檛 really. Most of the boys were a lot older than me. We used to start off like the Vienna Boy鈥檚 Choir, singing Strauss Melodies and such like and we also did comedy as well. I stayed with them till my voice broke but that was way after the war ended.

We played all the theatres in the variety shows and we had to leave the theatre by 10 o鈥檆lock every night and be back in the digs as we were too young to stay out. I enjoyed the performing but I didn鈥檛 enjoy being bullied, as I was the youngest one. Also my parents sent me away with lots of things that the other boys didn鈥檛 have.

Even when the war ended it felt the same, we were proud that we had won but it was just as difficult. We still had rationing and I ate so much rabbit it was untrue! My father was a butcher and he would sell all his meat to his customers and much to my mothers annoyance he used to come home with a rabbit for us to eat!

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