大象传媒

I was a boy of eleven when war broke out. A friend started me off as a boy messenger. We worked with the ARP. When telegraph lines came down and there was no phone communications we carried messages. Our base was Palladium cinema which was the ARP depot and when anyone needed an ambulance etc the police would come in and we had to cycle through the air raids to the ambulance depot to pass the notes over. We were given a tin hat but nothing else. Sometimes the only light was from the guns along the road and flashes from the explosions but we got used to it. It was an important job because there was no other means of communication. Nobody asked our age when we volunteered.

St Michael's school closed when wawr broke out and the children were all evacuated. My mother would not let us go because my father was in the army and she wanted us with her. There was no schooling so I started work building air raid shelters - got more money for doing this my my father was paid in the army to keep a wife and four children. Again no one asked our age. The shelters were finished by the beginning of 1941 in time for the May Blitz. The had 6 inch concrete roofs.

During the blitz we were in the shelters from 7pm to 5am. After the May blitz raids were far less frequent. Planes bombing Liverpool camr from Norway and the Germans began to run short of fuel.

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