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Being evacuated to Port Dinorwick in North Wales, I cannot remember how long we were there. I know we were back for the 1941 may blitz, when we used to go to the shelter which was a brick built affair in the middle of the street. Two or three families were allocated to each one, they had steel and wire bunk beds and room for a couple of chairs. During the blitz, which was quite heavy in Liverpool, we lived by a geometers. The goods railway used to run along the top end of the street and the German aeroplanes used to try and attack them both.

Our school was then closed so that the dead and injured people could be bought in and identified. We children had to make tea and sandwiches for the homeless. I remember vividly one man was bought in on a stretcher, obviously dead, with a cover over him, the cove slipped off and he had no head.

One night when we children were in the shelter and my parents were in the house, we had a bomb drop at the end of our street. It bought down seven houses and blew the doors off most of the others. My sister said, ‘Don’t scream!’ but unfortunately I couldn’t help it and screamed my head off! It was a good job I did because my parents thought it was our shelter that had been hit and they were very relieved to hear me screaming!

My brother and I used to go out after the all clear in order to collect shells and shrapnel. Once we were machine gunned in the street because the Ack-Ack Guns used to go down the main road and fire at the planes. Fortunately, we ten children and parents survived the war except one brother who was taken prisoner in Germany/Poland for five years.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Jacci Phillips of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Doreen Livingston Woolf and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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