大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Jenny Finch of the Lanchomeguard on behalf of Anne Scally and added to the site with her permission.

We lived in Curry Street off Scotland Road our house was bombed so we were re-housed in a flat on Melrose Road Kirkdale. I remember a mine being dropped on Kirkdale station. The after shock literally moved and shifted the air raid shelter-it was very frightening-my Dad said, 鈥淲e are staying put next time,it will be safer鈥�. I don鈥檛 remember a lot about the war because I was an evacuee first in Chester then later I was found a fantastic home in Buckley. In fact a few years ago due to a million to one chance meeting with someone from Buckley I was able to track down my dear friend Beryl from the home in Buckley where I was so happy and we were reunited and are still in touch today.
My father was in the army, his eldest brother was torpedoed and lost at sea and his youngest brother was a Japanese POW.
I remember when I was fourteen years old my friend and I used to go past the Italian POW camp at Bickerstaff- we used to talk through the wire fencing to the prisoners-one prisoner asked me for a comb so my friend and I took both him and his friend a comb -The next time we went to visit they had made each of us a ring each out of fine coloured plastic鈥攚hat a treasure. We could not understand their language but the exchange of simple gifts seems quite moving by today鈥檚 standards. Also at fourteen I used to go dancing at Skelmersdale Masonic I danced with a Polish soldier and couldn鈥檛 understand a word he was saying, he was very polite a real gentleman.
Another night we were coming home by bus to Skelmersdale from Chester and the sirens started wailing just as we got to Ormskirk. Of course the driver could not see without lights and refused to go any further in the blackout, any way we managed to persuade him to drive us home slowly as we were terrified to be away from home on such a night- to show our gratitude to the driver we had a whip round-it was all those kind of things that held us all together during the war.

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