大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website personally by Betty Tempest and added to the site with her permission.

I was born in Liverpool in 1938, just before World War Two broke out. In 1939 my three older sisters, Irene, aged 6, Rita aged 8 and Joan aged 9, were all evacuated to Wales, where they stayed until 1940. My sister Edna aged 4 and myself stayed with our Mam in our house in Bow Street, Liverpool. Our Mam, who was not happy with the people who were looking after my older sisters in Wales, decided to bring them back to Liverpool to live with us.

The area where we lived, which was near to the docks, suffered a lot of bombing, even so our Mam refused to go into the Air-Raid shelters, because they smelt and there were a lot of drunks in them. So, when there was an Air-Raid, we sheltered under the bed. In 1940 our sister Brenda was born, nine months after our dad had been home on leave from the Army.

In 1941, our Mam, for some unknown reason, took us to our Grandma's house for the day, which was in Huyton. When we returned home, we discovered that our house, and the rest of the block in Bow Street had been bombed and totally destroyed. All we had left was what we stood up in.

We returned round and went back to Huyton and stayed with our Grandma and Aunt Lizzie, who also lived in Huyton. We stayed there for a while, but because of our large family, and their families, the houses were over-crowded and due to this the powers that be, decided that our four eldest sisters would be sent to Colomendy Camp in Wales. But myself and Brenda stayed with our Mum and were evacuated to a large house called 'Brentwood' in Marple in Cheshire, where we stayed with other mothers and their children who had also been evacuated. Whilst there I remember one day being told by my Mam to get my hat and coat on as I was being taken out. I remember coming down the vast staircase and seeing a strange man, in uniform, at the bottom of the stairs holding out his arms to me. I ran back up the stairs as fast as my chubby little legs could carry me. My Mam told me it was my Daddy and that he had come to take me to a nearby cafe. I did go, but he later told me that I had kept my cup up against my face the whole time, and all he could see were my eyes watching him.
Nine months after that my baby brother Bernard was born, the first boy after eight girls.

In 1943 we were told that there was a house for us in Nelson, Lancashire, a place we had never heard of. Mam said it sounded like a 'right one-eyed hole'! Mam took the house however, because it meant that we could all be together again, except for Dad of course, who was now serving in Italy.

Sadly, the house we were given was a disgrace! There were bedbugs, cockroaches and mice in the house. Our Mam used to stay awake most of the night killing the bedbugs which climbed up the wall. The next day we could the blood splattered on the wall, which was a constant reminder. She did eventually get rid of the bed bugs, but the cock roaches and mice were more difficult, but we learned to live with them. The house had two bedrooms, one box room, no bath room, (We had to have tin baths in front of the fire.) The toilet was outside in the back yard.

After the war, when our Dad was demobbed, I remember he came back home from Italy with chocolate for us all. (I'm still a choc-o-holic to this day) He also told our Mam that he had brought her a present from Italy. She was thinking that it was maybe a handbag or a pair of shoes, but she was most disappointed to find that he had brought her a large piece of lava from Mount Vesuvius. Needless to say our Dad got it thrown at his head. (I bet he wished he had only brought a small piece.)

I often wonder how our Mam coped with all that she went through during the war, with seven young children to look after. But she, along with all the other women of that time were made of stern stuff! God Bless them!

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