大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by the CSV Action Desk at 大象传媒 Gloucestershire on behalf of Bertl Pollard with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

In 1940 I was eleven years old. We lived in The Dingle in Liverpool. There was mum, dad, my two sisters and a brother. When the siren sounded, we had to sleep in an air raid shelter in a nearby street. When there was a lull in the bombing, the children used to go out looking for pieces of shrapnel. We would then take the shrapnel to the local corner shop to get the shrapnel weighed to see who had found the heaviest piece!

If a house had a cellar, the government used to reinforce the walls to make an air raid shelter. One night during an air raid, our neighbours went to their grandmothers house to use the cellar. The women and girls went into the cellar and the men and boys stayed upstairs. The men played cards and the boys watched. The house took a direct hit from a bomb. All the men and boys were killed.

If there were two cellars next to each other, some bricks were losened so that if one house was bombed, anyone using the cellar could quickly remove the bricks and get into the other cellar.

I was going home on the bus and the siren went. The bus stopped near the Pier Head. The conductress told me I had to get off and go in the shelter under the Pier Head. She gave me half her banana! I got home at 2am, no one knew where I had been.

Sometimes I think I dreamt it all because it was so horrible.

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