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I was born in 1939, in 1945 I was six. My memories are vague; father was away in the army. He landed in Normandy on the 7th June to liberate France. I lived with my mother and sister. Mother was always anxious that father should not be sent to the Far East. She was pious and prayed for him not to go there.
We had a communal shelter and my mum wouldn’t take us there due to the fact that they could be unsavoury places used for homosexual activities and so on. There was an air base near St Helens and I recall seeing the first American soldiers who came to chase the local girls. There was tension between the American servicemen and the locals. They gave girls stockings, and gave us gum. Some girls gained a bad reputation for ‘going with the Yanks.’ My last memory is of VE day, I recall running to a local park and seeing a bonfire there.

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