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My father Jim Laverty, who was in the Home Guard, mother Fanny, myself Frances and my brother and two younger sisters had a fish and chip shop in Earle Road, Edge Hill, Liverpool. I was 13 years old when I heard on the radio, Mr Chamberlain say we were at war.

Within days my brother and I were evacuated to Wales with our school. I to Holywell, my brother to Cardiff. Like lost sheep, we stood in a huge hall, cold, tired and bedraggled – please will someone take me. I was fortunate, Mr and Mrs Ellis were good to me, my poor brother was not so fortunate in Cardiff.

The war was quiet, so we came home. Then the lovely summer and we were back at school. Then the air raids started. There were times when we were sitting on a tramcar and the sirens would go off. Should we stay or should we run for it? Whilst my brother and I were in the Cameo, the sirens went off. We stayed and watched the film, then came home running through the back entries with planes flying over head. The bombs would start dropping and we would fall on our bellies, then jump up and run home to the safety of our air raid shelter, where we slept many, many a night during the air raids.

There was an empty shop next door and my father stored sacks of potatoes there – fish and chips were not rationed. In the dark evening’s people would be sheltering and sleeping underground in the local schools and railway stations. There were ‘runners’, young people who would take the orders for fish, chips and mushy peas and with my parents we would make them up into cardboard boxes. We had a cocoa tin, with a tiny light in it over the cash register. The sirens would go off, we would finish the last order. My mother and us kids knew the routine – into the air raid shelter, whilst my father would stay to shovel the hot red coals of fire, which we had in those days – not electric. He would shovel the red-hot coals into the bucket from each side of the chip range. It was these fires that heated the oil or fat to cook the chips.

On this particular night, my mother was pregnant, she was upstairs in the bedroom, the planes were already over head as the sirens were late. My mum was bringing the young one down stairs and the bombing started. The house shook, my mother was screaming, my father was just finishing off the hot coals. He heard mum scream and burnt all his hand. That night how we got to the shelter I’ll never know. We had a parrot – Jimmy – he loved chips and we took him screaming into the shelter.

It was the worst night. The planes, the guns, the bombs, landmines, the fires the floods. We survived the onslaught. When it was over, Clint Road School had been hit by a landmine – hundreds were buried beneath the school. We had no windows, oranges and apples were rolling down the road, shops and houses were flattened. People were dying and the mortuary was just down the road. People we loved and knew, friends and customers – where were they?

Our shop was still standing, but with no window and no water my father said we couldn’t possibly open. There were people on they way to the mortuary when there were suddenly queues outside the shop. We had no water to wash the potatoes. I don’t know what happened, but suddenly water was being pumped and piped in. Fat for frying was made available. Mr Churchill had made it known that we were priority and we had to stay open to feed the people and with his help WE DID. The air raids and the bombings carried on and so did we.

War is terrible and these people who declare war should first live through one, before they condemn others to go through the same thing.

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