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My story is about my Dad, he passed away three years ago and he was a Prisoner of War who escaped from Germany and was in hiding in Italy for three years. In Italy he lived with a family in the mountains. To earn his keep he used to repair all their clothes on a sewing machine. When the Germans came he would go in hiding in the mountains. When it was all clear they would put a white sheet out to let him know it was clear for him to come back. That is the way he did it for three years. My mum thought he was dead because she didn’t hear from him, this was because he couldn’t have any mail sent to our house. I was brought up in the North End of Birkenhead and he couldn’t get in touch in case the Germans got hold of the letter. I was born in 1940 and dad came home just after the war, turned up at the door and I didn’t know him, I didn’t know who he was. He never used to talk about the war because he had escaped.

What were your memories of your dad when he first walked back in?

Well I was only young, and when you don’t have a father around you think you have only got a mother. I didn’t know him at all. Then I got to know him and we moved from the North End, Carrington Street to Rock Ferry in 1946. My dad always liked to watch things about the war because he missed so much being a Prisoner of War and escaping. When a War film was on he always looked at it. If he could have written a book about it, it would have been a good one. I have only got information that I have heard, he never told us much about it. It was only in later life, just before he died, that we found out more things. We did find out that to live, anything that moved he ate. He ate mice to keep him going.

What about your mum did he tell her?

Well he did tell her things, but it wasn’t mentioned in the house much. My dad only had two jobs in his life, he worked on the Woodside Ferries then from there he went to the Mersey Tunnel. He started off ordinary, worked in the tollbooths, worked himself up to Acting Sergeant, Sergeant, Inspector and he ended up Chief Inspector of the Mersey Tunnel before he retired. He died three years July just gone and I lost my mum in March. She was 88, dad had been 88 when he died.

My dad’s brother was a Pilot during the war, and was shot down when he was 21. He worked at Port Sunlight and he got the D.F.C. His name is on the Cenotaph at Port Sunlight, it is on a plaque in Bidston Church, and he has his name in a book in Birkenhead Town Hall — which is a museum now — because they couldn’t put all the names on the Cenotaph at Hamilton Square.

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