大象传媒

Regarding the bombing of Smith Street, Rose Vale, Great Homan Street, Poultend Place, May Blitz:

My Auntie Lizzie and other members of the smith family lived at 56 Prince Edwin Lane, Liverpool 5, where the houses had an attic and cellar or air raid shelter.

Bombs were dropping in Liverpool every night during the May Blitz. We were also shot at in the streets by planes. Prince Rupert was our playground as well as Netherfield Road Council School. After all the bombing every night you always went to see if the family was ok. Ada Smith and Tommy Smith were walking along Portland Place in the dark with only a flashlight on their way to Aunty Elsie Walker's, when my uncle Tommy suddenly went missing. Ada turned her flashlight on and she saw this bald head coming out of a hole in the ground, a 'bomb crater.' Tommy had fallen down the hole and as he was getting out he said, "You know Ada, if I had been drunk I wouldn't have fallen down the hole!"

Frankie Smith and Tommy woke up in the attic with window frames on top of them, glass and brown paper, with water coming out of the drains and the gas mains fractured and alight. All the houses were bombed and the house of the Smith family was one of only six that were left, along with those of the Woods, Skyners, Phelan, and Killen families.

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