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This story was submitted to the People's War site by J Johnson of Congleton Library on behalf of Sheila Parry and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was the youngest of 4 children and I lived in Bingley Road, Anfield, Liverpool, with my brothers, sisters and mother. My father worked away in the Naval Examination Unit. My mother was very nervous and unhappy about being in the shelter every night during the Blitz. One day a bomb hit an ammunition train at Clubmoor sidings close by. Having gone through a night of continuous bombings by the Germans, we then had to go through a whole day of explosions from the ammunitions train. House windows came in and chimneys came down etc. My mother was becoming more and more upset. Our next door neighbours had also had enough. They had a relative living in New Lane, Burscough in Ormskirk. They told my mother that they were going to stay with them and my mother begged them to take us — which they did.

That night, our house and air raid shelter got a direct hit from a German bomb. The blast also knocked down the houses opposite ours. The next day, my father, having seen Liverpool going up in flames night after night, decided to come home to check on the family. He came back to complete devastation and thought that we had all been killed, until he found a policeman who told him that the house had been empty. Another neighbour then told my father that we had all gone to Ormskirk the previous day. He then travelled up to Ormskirk to see us and tell us about our house. A very lucky escape!

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