大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Liz Andrew of the Lancshomeguard on behalf of Mrs Flo Conley and added to the site wirth her permission.

I was twenty six when the War started and I lived with my parents in law in Pinehurst Avenue in Anfield in Liverpool.My husband was called up and joined the Army. First he worked on the serchlights down on the Docks but then he was posted abroad. He was taken prisoner by the Germans in Tobruk and remained a prisoner for the next five years. He was taken back to Germany - but at least I knew he was safe. I had had a baby - he was nine months old when my husband joined the Army - and he didn't see him again for five years.

There was a railway line behind us and there was a famous occasion when an ammunition train had been hit but the driver bravely drove it beyond the houses before it blew up. He was killed in the explosion.

We had an Air Raid Shelter in the garden. There were times when the sirens were going and we were in it nearly every night. I didn't get much sleep with the baby only six months old. My husband had fixed up some beds for us before he went abroad and I used to put the baby to sleep down there. I remember coming out of the Air Raid shelter one morning and coming into the house to find that the ceiling was down, the curtains had been blown off and the carpet was alight with a spark from the open fireplace. I got a bowl of water and put it out.

After the War my husband came home very very stout. He'd been living on potato peelings and things like that and at first I didn't know him when I saw him at the station. Once he came home he lost a lot of weight of course.

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