大象传媒

This story has been submitted to the People's War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home Guard on behalf of Joy Heffernan and is in her own words....

This story has echoes of the John Boorman film 鈥楬ope and Glory.鈥� At the start of the war I remember the hot Sunday and the silence that followed a broadcast on the wireless of Neville Chamberlain, I was playing with a friend and we were cycling about the roads in Prenton on the Wirral. Our road had plenty of children ages ranging from 6 to 16.

Nothing much happened then, but slowly signs of something exciting began. Air raid shelters appeared, Anderson shelters in gardens and brick ones on the main roads. Then there were the air raid warnings and everyone left shops and sat in the shelters till the all clear rang out. This went on for the first few weeks then everyone ignored the warning sirens. This was early 1940.

We had bins at the end of the road to put waste vegetable matter and boxes on the lamp post for bones. Re-cycling is nothing new and I still have the habit, along with saving pieces of string and paper!

The fathers of my friends in the road we lived on were in the Merchant Navy in various shipping lines ranging from the Blue Funnel, the Clan Line and Elder Dempster, not forgetting that posh one P and O! Being in the Merchant Nnavy these sailors never wore their uniform when ashore and as a consequence they were often spat at and called cowards. It still makes me cross that it鈥檚 only now, that there is even a mention of these merchant seamen, the Atlantic and Russian convoys were a lifeline to many as well as death to many more in the freezing conditions.

My aunt, her husband was in the Merchant Mavy, the same line as my dad, the Blue Funnel (known as the Blue Flue) had a cottage in Lancashire outside Ormskirk and we used to go there at weekends. The bus to Woodside, then ferry across the Mersey, looking at the various ships waiting to dock, tugs with barrage balloons flying and then the Crosby bus from Liverpool to Ormskirk. We then had a walk to Lathom where the cottage was. I enjoyed these visits and played with my cousin who was 5 years younger than me.

As time went on the raids became real and one night I remember planes overhead flying towards Liverpool. On Monday morning taking the bus to the Pier Head we realized that there had been a bad night. Rubble everywhere, firemen鈥檚 hoses across the streets and at Walton Jail complete standstill. From the top of the bus I had a grand stand view and my memories are of organized chaos, but with a certain stubborn attitude of 鈥榳e鈥檒l get there in the end.鈥� Of course we did and to this day when I go down the road the church that was left standing is still there, with a motorway near by. Then on arrival home there was a rope across the road with a 鈥楧anger Unexploded Bomb鈥� notice. I was all agog and wanted to race down the road to explore.

My granny lived in the Isle of Man and we were able to go by boat from Fleetwood to Douglas for the summer holidays. These again were exciting. We were able to see the German and Italian prisoners of war in hotels along the sea front. They waved at us and smiled. They were behind barbed wire enclosures. There were also British/German Italians who were interned at the start of the war while they were being assessed. Some are now famous, the Allegri Quartet was formed there and the father of the actor Victor Spinetti also spent time on the island.

My aunt joined the WRNS and became a petty officer. She was in the catering section of HMS Valkyrie, again, on the sea front. She met John Pertwee and others who later became famous in show business.

Along with my school friends, we were a mixed primary school and the boys were always drawing Spitfires and Hurricanes as well as the German bombers, I got to know all the silhouettes and was able to pick some of them out. We used to follow the line of the bombs, they were dropped in sticks and land mine parachutes were very valuable as well as shrapnel and burnt out incendiary bombs, swapping was a playtime hobby. My mother was horrified, but we gave no thought to any danger. We loved climbing into craters and getting dirty. Then one day on arrival at school we found it had been bombed (shades of the film yet again). We were all delighted, our parents were appalled.

At this time we were getting food parcels from relations in Australia and there was an invitation for me to go there. I was wildly excited, but my mother said no. she would not have two of us on the high seas. A few days later the ship 鈥楥ity of Benares鈥� was torpedoed on her route to Canada. It had children on board. Decades later, one of the survivors gave a talk to the Friends of the Lancaster Museum about her survival. It was very moving. So I stayed in the UK and a couple of years later we moved to North Wales, my dad had injured his knee coming down a hatch and was operated on and told to go and teach on HMS Conway in the Menai Straits. I was then an evacuee (having survived the blitz) along with several others from Merseyside.

VE Day came and we decorated the school and had a day off. There were bonfires and parties going on all night. VJ Day I was at camp in Oswestry and my memories are all of the Londoners who were furious that they wee not in the capital to celebrate.

I found the war exciting as well as sad. Friends and relations died. My uncle鈥檚 ship 鈥楶eisander鈥� was torpedoed in 1941 off the coast of Nantucket in the USA and he survived in a life boat for 4 days before hitting the shoreline in the USA. The Americans had not yet come into the war; Pearl Harbour pushed them into it in December 1941. Incidentally my dad sailed into Pearl Harbour a few days after the attack and made friends with an American Army Lieutenant who later on told us the reason so many ships were in the harbour at the time. They should not have been there, but with shore leave and the pay packets being issued on the Saturday, the Mayor put pressure on the Navy to let the ships come back, Sunday saw the attack. I still keep in touch with the family now living in Florida.

We were all worried at the time along with countless others who had relations on the high seas. Many families in our area were involved. My father had a code with names of friends representing places so that when we got a telegram saying he had just visited Dorothy Dickenson we knew he was in New York. We had a world map pinned on the kitchen wall with the voyages mapped out, my geography was good, I knew where New South Wales and Penang were, plus many more other ports. Friends, who I still keep in touch with all say, 鈥淚t does not seem that long ago.鈥�

The A bomb was criticized, but I well remember the returned prisoners of war who had been at the mercy of the Japanese, who said that the bomb had saved their lives from the hell they had endured. They suffered all sorts of nightmares until they died.

I find it sad that the Victory in Europe has had a much higher profile than the Victory in the Far East; they did seem to be the 鈥楩orgotten Army.鈥� The Australians and New Zealanders both pay tribute to them.

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