大象传媒

My mother, Josephine Lloyd, was nine years old when Bootle was hit by what is known as 'The May Blitz'. She lived in Milton Street just off Marsh Lane.

One evening the sirens sounded while she was visiting a friend, so they took shelter in a brick air raid shelter in Tennyson Street. During this raid, an HE bomb hit the shelter.

My mother remembers waking up stunned, with an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) warden and three rescue workers lifting a large lump of the concrete roof off her foot (she still bears the scars today).

The ARP warden told her not to look to her left. Like any other child would do, she did, and saw her friend's mother sitting bolt upright, but dead. Her left eye was resting on her cheek.

My mother felt a strange tingling sensation on her head. She put her hand up to feel it, and it was her hair standing on end with the fright. She was taken by ambulance to Bootle Hospital on Derby Road, and remembers the ambulance driving around bomb craters with the sound of shrapnel pinging off its roof. The ambulance was diverted to the fever hospital at Fernhill Road / Linacre Lane, were she was treated along with many other people.

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