大象传媒

We lived in Vyner Road Wallasey. I remember the brick shelter being built with what looked like purple mortar, in the brickwork in our back garden. Next door had one built, no 17. He was a Mr Thomas who had built all the houses in Vyner Rd and several other roads roundabout in collaboration with a Mr Linley. The shelters had no damp proof courses and always smelt damp and dank. There was a metal handle in the wall which was supposed to create an emergency exit but I couldn鈥檛 see how it would work.. There were two chest high bunks along two walls and the rest slept on deck hatch planks on the floor. There was an electric bell on the side of the bunk nearest the door, which connected with the kitchen in the house only to be used by the children in cases of dire need.
I can remember hearing the bombing all around us and not being the least bit worried or frightened, in fact I beat time to the bombs on a case as they fell.
Anticipating shortages that were likely to occur my mother had bought new spare clothing to see us through the war. One evening during the bombing she was going upstairs and noticed under, my bedroom door, a bright light. Almost simultaneously an ARP warden called at the house to inform us he had seen a bomb go through the roof . An incendiary bomb had penetrated the roof and entered my bedroom and buried itself in the suitcase of brand new spare clothes, which smothered it and saved the house.
After a heavy raid we would walk up the hill to Claremount Rd and look towards Liverpool and see the red sky, the after effects of all the bombing. Three or four houses away from us a land mine dropped, totally demolishing a pair of semi detached houses, substantially damaging several others and killing several people. The next road Broadway Avenue, gave access to Belvidere playing field, in which was moored a barrage balloon which caused great excitement one day when it escaped and its trailing cable removed the chimney pots from many houses roundabout bringing the Air Raid Wardens on to the streets ordering all the children indoors.
My brother was born on 21st December 1940 and due to the bombing my mother decided it was safer to leave him in the nursing home at 89 Penket Rd, Wallasey. Unfortunately a bomb dropped close to the nursing home whilst he was being taken to the air raid shelter and due to the after effects of the blast and pneumonia he died aged 6 weeks. My Father told me that he took 鈥淛oseph Anthony鈥� in a white box in the back of a car to the cemetery where he is buried with my grandmother Florence Dowdall.
When she used to visit us in the air raid shelter she would frighten us to death by chanting in a weird voice that if we did not behave ourselves 鈥淏oney 鈥� would come and get us.( Boney goes back to Napoleon Bonaparte )
After several short term evacuations to Leasowe and West Kirby on individual nights, we ended up living with Florence Dowdall in Burns Drive Rhyl where our near neighbour was Rob Wilton one of the most famous voices on radio during the war whose catch phrase was 鈥淭he day war broke out my missus said to me 鈥︹��..鈥� 鈥� She has a cruel tongue 鈥�
One morning in Rhyl I was in bed in the loft when a mine went off on the beach and I distinctly felt the bed move.
.During all this time attempts were made to educate me at various schools. Marymount Convent was bombed and I recall the chapel being in ruins and thinking it very exciting when the air raid warning sirens went resulting in an immediate suspension of lessons and adjournment to the large shelters on the school playground.
Returning home to Wallasey in 1944 was very exciting after the dullness of Rhyl under the threat of Boney.
The nuns at Marymount would not allow boys on the premises after the age of 9 so I had to move to St Albans Catholic Primary, which, having been bombed out,was housed in a non catholic building known as Church Street, Egremont, Wallasey. Imagine the denominational friction. We quickly learnt to keep a low profile. I distinctly recall our initiation, being roughed up in the air raid shelters, by the Protestants ( Proddy Dogs ) in what they called Belsen. A word which had already entered schoolboy parlance, just over a year of its liberation.

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