大象传媒

When I was a young boy one of the country's most famlus comedians- George Roby- used to start his act by saying "The day war broke out". But my own wartime experiences started the day after war broke our, Monday 14th September 19339. I was paraded outside the Friary school with about two hundred of my classmates. There we stood, wearing our best clothes, such as they were, and also our gas masks and identity labels, ready to walk to the tramcars which were to take us to Lime Street Station. There was greatr excitement as not many of us had ever been on a train before. We all also wore knapsacks which in my case contained a change of clothes. Before we got on the train we were given a brown paper bag which ccontained among other things a 1lb bar of Cadbury's chocolate. Most of us had never had one of those either and couldn't wait to start eating it. I don't remember much of the journey but we endedup in the village of Treffnant in Denbighshire and were billetted in a mansion house in the grounds of LLanerch Park which was owned by a Captain Price-Jones who we were told was a millionaire. So 40 of us and my mother were billetted on him. After settling down and a short rest we were given our first meal of macaroni and cheese. This to a crowd of Scouser kids who had been brought up on scouse and the chippy! Most of the kids hated the macaroni and cheese and left it but I loved it and stuffed as much of it down me as I could until I could eat no more.

The next thing that stands out in my memory was that Captain Jones decided that this crowd of scruffy little rascals needed scrubbing, delousing and haircutting and so this happened. Give the man his due he also reclothed most of us. I must say here that none of this delousing, cleaning or haircutting happened to myself or my two brothers because my mother was with us and wouldn't allow it. We were enrolled in the local village school, which we had to walk to in crocodile fashion. This was a couple of miles away. The hardest part of this was walking through Llanerch Park itself where I think the Captain had pedigree horses which were allowed to run free and terrify the life out of us until one of the estate workers took control of them. I can still remember that feeling of terror. All of this took place during the so-called phoney war when the Germans hadn't yet started bombing our cities, so by Christmas time most of the evacuee kids had come home to Liverpool.

There was something that happened during the time we were waiting to be transported away. Thee was a famous Liverpool character, former now retired boxer Gus Foley standing wawtching us kids being transported away and i can still see his face. As well as bearing the scars of his former profession, the tears were literally pouring down Gus's face.

And so we were all home again for Christmas, and this was the time Hitler decided to show us that he meant business. The first time I heard the drone of Nazi planes and bombs being dropped all around you, that really was something you would never forget.

If my memory serves me rightly they decided to bomb us at dinner time on Christmas Day. This was a really nasty piece of work. Everything had to be left while we ranfor the air raid shelter. Talking of which, the street I lived in was so delapidated that the authorities decided not to build a shelter in it. In other words, as my mum and dad said, the best thing that could happen to it would be for it to be bombed to pieces. The outcome of this was that we always had to ru to my grandmother's air raid shelter which was 300 or 400 yards away, which is not a great distance normally, but it is when you are a mother trying to protect three young kids. This was highlighted one night - we were half way to my grandmother's house in Soho Street, my mam myselg and two brothers when a landmine dropped and exploded a couple of streets away. My mam dragged us intoa doorway to protect us from the blast. When things quietened down we carried on, but I and another brother took off on our own for the shelter - she shouted at us terribly and gave us a smack on our bottoms. I was years older when I realised what terrible worry and stress I put on my mam.

But the war had its good points as far as I was concerned as a ten year old boy watching real dogfights between Spitfires and German planes. They were Messserschmidt 109s fighters that had been accompanying the Dornier bombers. What more could a ten year old boy ask for? At other times we would be playing, usually comparing cigarette cards of fighter planes or pictures of different regiments, when it was time to go back to school for afternoon lessons, when the air raid siren would screech out, accompanied by the cheering of thousands of kids who didn't need to go back to school while there was an air raid in progress.That was one of the good things about the war, but the air raids at night were terrifying for everybody, especially when the Prophets of Doom "there's a full moon tonight and the Gerry pilots will be able to see whatever they want". I believed that the were specially looking for me and my family.

There was always something to occupy us, from watching the services get the barrage balloons up, or watching the searchlights, or most exciting of all watching the anti-aircraft firing - we didn't have far to go to look for one of those.

As I said earlier my dad had been badly injured in the Great War, and he was now an Air Raid Warden. My sister worked in the munitions factory atKirkby. That was the way the war went for us until the next evacuation.

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