大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by (Helen Smith) on behalf of (Mary Girling) and has been added to the site with his/her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I had two babies, a boy and a girl, one was 2 and one 3. I lived in Liverpool and when the Germans' bombs started coming we were allowed to use a shelter at the end of the street that was owned by the Catholic brothers of St Elizabeth's College. They used to use the shelter for woodwork lessons etc. We had a wonderful time there. We sang and danced and my parents were there too. One of the brothers was a bit of a flirt. He was called Brother Raymond and he liked me. Well so my mother said. She used to say, "don't look up now he's looking over". I used to say, "I'm not bothered about Brother Raymond, I'm more worried about the Germans".

When my husband came home from serving, he came home to an empty house. A neighbour told him that we were at the shelter. He came to see me and he wanted to know why we were there as he didn't really know what it was like. We all left the shelter with him and we went home to bed. In the night the air raid siren went off and the whistling bombs started. People had talked of whistling bombs but I had never heared them until then. I will now never forget their awful sound. I said to my husband that we needed to go to the shelter.

We had to crawl up the street because it was pitch black. The air raid warden shouted, "Who goes there?" He was shocked that I was out with the children. Because I was carrying my boy who was quite heavy I fell down. The air raid warden grabbed my son and took us to the shelter. I never left the shelter again until it all ended.

The day after we were evacuated to Wem in Shropshire. My mum said that I had to go because of the children and because Liverpool wasn't safe. However, we were only there a week and then we returned.

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