大象传媒

The force of the blast lifted me out of bed and dropped me on the carpet. Books had fallen out
of the bookcase, and a section of plaster from the ceiling had come down, but the rest of the
room seemed to be intact. The thick blackout curtains had captured most of the glass blown
out of the window. From outside came the sound of more breaking glass; somebody was
shouting, and a woman was screaming. The whine of the air raid siren seemed an unnecessary
addition to the noise as everyone seemed to have guessed that once again Liverpool had
unwelcome visitors 鈥� the Luftwaffe. Another bomb went off further away, and the anti-aircraft
fire added to the cacophony.

This was May 1941, and I just 13 years old. The safety of my most precious
possession 鈥� my new bicycle 鈥� was my first thought. I took my torch and checked the bike
over before deciding to investigate to see if I was an orphan. Orphans were sent by ship to
Canada where there was no rationing of food and sweets. A newsreel at the cinema had shown
them happily working on a farm with horses and cows and rabbits, and so the prospect of the
loss of my parents was not bothering me unduly.

My parents were sitting on their bedroom floor stunned. In the dark and the panic they
had leapt out of bed and had both tried to get into the same dressing gown so their heads had met
with a crack.

I looked out of their undamaged window into the street lit by flames from the
tobacconist. A cylindrical black object was slowing turning in the middle of the road emitting
a ghastly orange glow. From a doorway two figures appeared dressed in overalls, rubber boots
and gloves and wearing gasmasks and tin hats with the initial鈥檚 ARP on them. Air Raid
Precautions seemed a misnomer as it was a bit late to take precautions. One carried a bucket of
water, and the other a device called a stirrup pump. The idea was that the pump was put into the
bucket and worked vigorously with the handle while the other pointed the hose.

The foot-long black cylinder, if left well alone, might not have bothered anyone, but
the application of a stream of water got it really annoyed. The phosphorus suddenly burst into
yellow and orange spears of flame which then attacked the nearby shops. The ARP pair wisely
retreated. I was annoyed why they had not instead directed their attentions to saving the
tobacconist and sweet shop were I was due to collect my sweet ration.

Our home was in Allerton Road, close to the Penny Lane that twenty years later would
be made immortal by the Beatles. Being so far from the docks, my father judged we would
be unlikely to be bombed but on that night in May he changed his mind and we all moved
under the stairs, in an space so small there was barely room for the deckchair that served as
my bed.

After seven successive nights of bombing, May 7th 鈥� 14th 1941, the house was still
intact although minus a few windows, a few tiles off the roof and a shortened chimney. Less
fortunate were those in the city itself where Civil Defence and law and order had found
themselves unable to cope. Those who lived in the dock area had found themselves unable to
resist the temptation of looting food stores, warehouses, shops and offices where doors and
windows had been blown in by bomb blast. They were in days joined by families arriving by
train from rural Lancashire and North Wales who came equipped with spades and spacious
shopping bags to pick over the ruins. Even my father who professed to be an honest and
upright citizen arrived home from the pub one day where he had purchased a huge tin of jam
and a variety of other foods in tins that certainly made the rationing more tolerable for awhile.

The police had neither the resources or the time to curb this private enterprise until
things got more serious with some looters deciding not to wait for the Germans to knock down
the doors and windows for them. A neighbour who owned a tool shop, was attacked by
鈥榩erson or persons unknown.鈥� within minutes of the siren sounding and before a bomb had
been dropped. Just one half-inch chisel was all that was left of his portable stock 鈥� and that
had been inserted through his upper arm as he tried to protect his property.

After one raid, my uncle hurried to his offices in St. John鈥檚 Market on hearing it had
been bombed. He managed to rescue 拢300 from the safe and the petty cash box, but, leaving
the wrecked office, happened to see a foot with a neatly tied and polished shoe sticking
through the ceiling. Acting on an instinct that he instantly regretted, he took a firm hold of it
only to find himself with all of a leg ending at the knee. Staring at it in horror, he staggered
back and dropped twenty feet through a hole in the floor, carrying with him leg, cash box and
parts of the timber floor.

His fall was fortunately broken by a pile of sacks from his father-in-law鈥檚 stock.
Wiping off the dust and plaster, he looked up to see a woman in an immaculate green uniform
wearing a pristine white apron. The letters 鈥榃VS鈥� (Women鈥檚 Voluntary Service) were
embroidered on her hat, and she was holding a mug of tea. 鈥淒rink this dear, you look as
though you鈥檝e had a bit of a shock.鈥�

She took the macabre souvenir from him. 鈥淭hat鈥檒l be from one of the firewatchers I
expect.鈥� She turned as though expecting to find the rest of the owner hopping along among
the crowd. As she left, she turned back to Uncle Joe. 鈥淣ow you be sure to drink it while it鈥檚
still hot. You鈥檙e lucky, it鈥檚 got two sugars 鈥� last of our stock.鈥�

The official histories talk of the stoicism and humour of the Liverpudlians under fire,
but it is stretching the truth so it becomes lost in the myth that has survived from the wartime
propaganda. I hope in this 大象传媒 series that an attempt will be made to redress the balance.

During the blitz most realised they had to care for themselves. The underground
railway in Liverpool offered protection and safety for thousands but the excuse for not turning
a section of the Mersey railway into a shelter was that it was impossible to switch off the
power. There were those who, at the start of an air raid, demonstrated dramatically that it was
possible. The police arrived to demand to know who had committed the act of serious
vandalism. Some 400 voices declared in chorus: 鈥淲e did.鈥�

Community and family unity existed in Liverpool in abundance, but this was a product
of adversity that had little to do with the war. 鈥淲e look after our own鈥� had always been a
popular expression. Not that 鈥榯he working class鈥� were deficient in patriotism, but it was not as
depicted in most of the wartime histories I have read. They hated Hitler and all he stood for, but
it was on a scale that included their own local government and what they called 鈥渢he boss class鈥�.

Help by ladies from the middle and upper classes entering central areas of Liverpool
was resented. My aunt, who took her spare blankets into a bombed-out area of Bootle was
told: 鈥淟eave 鈥榚m there missus then bugger off.鈥�

The civil defence authorities did their best to maintain morale, but they were hampered
by the outstanding incompetence and stupidity of all those in senior positions. There was no
civic trust, even in the police force, and the air raid wardens were given little training, even
in basic first-aid. Normally they ignored orders and instructions and, as a result, saved more
lives then they were ever to be credited for.

Liverpool has a long history of civil unrest and, not for the first time, troops were
brought in after the first serious air raid in May. With no regard for the delicate religious
sensibilities of the area, many were from an Irish regiment who were given orders to shoot
looters on sight. The task was carried out with little sense of justice, and with religious fervour
and zeal in certain parts of the city.

Alerted by the sound of a shot, I witnessed a neighbour on the roof of his shop who
had been covering a large hole with a tarpaulin, in the act of falling off. Clutching his leg he
complained 鈥淚t鈥檚 broke.鈥� A sergeant looked down: 鈥淪erve yer right fer trying to rob that
feller鈥檚 shop.鈥� He walked off and left him. Fortunately it wasn鈥檛 as we found while giving him
tea and sympathy.

On the same day, a family friend, a curate, unloading food from a barrow for the
servicemen鈥檚 canteen, was badly beaten up with rifle butts before his screams and denials that
he was a looter alerted the priest. While the priest was aiding the injured man, the soldiers
helped themselves to the cigarettes and the bottled beer.

After four suspected looters were found, stark naked and tied to lamposts, each labelled
鈥榣ootar鈥�, there was a public outcry. This was not on the grounds of poor spelling but indecent
behaviour. The wife of an alderman complained she had been obliged 鈥渢o avert my eyes鈥�. The
troops were withdrawn.

After more raids, the looting resumed. Blacklers 鈥� a shop which had years earlier been
looted during a police strike 鈥� again lost all its stock. The reaction from an enraged Lord
Mayor was to bring in more troops. This time they brought in a variety of soldiers, many of
whom seemed to be only nominally on our side. These included platoons drawn from the
Pioneer Corps, made up of a human minority who had been rejected by even those regiments
who were not known to be too particular.

The Pioneer Corps got all the unpleasant jobs, such as discouraging prisoners of war
from making a dash for freedom, or digging graves 鈥� at which they were known specialists.
It only needed the addition of some barbed wire, and Liverpool might have become a Stalag
modelled on German lines. Movement to and from the city was restricted, and armed troops
stood at every railway station barrier with policemen inspecting 鈥榮hopping鈥� and receipts. There
were even checkpoints on the East Lancs Road 鈥� the major route linking the city with the rest
of Lancashire.

A rough estimate (my own) is that about ten percent of Liverpool鈥檚 fatal 鈥渁ir raid
casualties鈥� (estimated by rumour at 10,000, but in reality probably less than 4,000 dead) were
victims of shrapnel or misfires from our own anti-aircraft guns or shot by our own troops.
None of this, of course, was ever reported. Nor is official mention made of one of Liverpool鈥檚
worst 鈥� and avoidable 鈥� disasters that did raise the death toll.

In the Huskisson Dock they were loading a ship 鈥� the Malakand 鈥� with ammunition
destined for the Middle East. With the start of the May blitz, it was sensibly suggested that the
ship should be towed out into the comparative safety of the River Mersey estuary. The
Harbour Master said no, deciding that it would be a hazard to ships entering and leaving the
port. It would be difficult to complete the loading and, if it sank, he argued, it might block the
channel.

He chose to ignore a previous disaster when a gunpowder ship 鈥� Lotty Sleigh 鈥� blew
up and wrecked part of the city just fifty years earlier. He ignored the alternative 鈥� the
鈥榟azard鈥� to the port itself.

鈥楶rotecting鈥� the city was a ring of barrage balloons, made by Littlewoods of Liverpool
of football pools fame. Each was held to the ground with a steel hawser; each was full of
hydrogen which, although inflammable, was not as dangerous as the shiny silver fabric
proofed with a chemical which burnt with intense heat long after the gas had gone off and
away in a blue flame. A good deterrent against low flying aircraft 鈥� and used for this at
Dunkirk and at the Normandy landings 鈥� they simply provided the bombers, flying about one
hundred feet above them, with ideal targets. They came down as blue and yellow fireballs,
helping to guide the bomb aimers in the following aircraft, and adding to the conflagration.

One barrage balloon came down on the deck of the Malakand, and the superstructure
promptly caught fire.

Even in this crisis, the ship might have been saved by the battery of fire hoses expect
for a nameless person who is no longer with us in any recognizable human form. He decided
the ship should be sunk in the dock. Unable to reach the valves to flood the ship, the story
goes that he decided to use oxyacetylene torches on the stern plates in order to make a gaping
hole. It is not possible to check out the story as it seems he unwisely chose to supervise the
operation personally and there were no survivors. For it does not take much imagination to
predict the result of using a very hot flame on a ship loaded with high explosive! Even today
I am unable to watch any firework display with equanimity.

The first explosion shook the entire city without warning. The two that followed
provided an impressive display that lit up the sky. Giant lumps of masonry and metal were
hurled across the city. A huge section of the overhead dock railway was torn from its
foundations and destroyed a warehouse filled with grain which then burnt for three days and
nights. Entire streets of houses became rubble. Until quite recently it was possible to see the
empty space left on the city map, still ironically called by locals 鈥楳alakand Park鈥�.

My aunt, living on the other side of the river, had her meal rudely interrupted when
a 8-inch brass shell case bounced off the roof and finished up, still smoking, in the rose bed.
鈥淛ust as they were coming into bloom鈥�, she complained bitterly.

The area of devastation in the dock area was such as to challenge any journalist, even
armed with a thesaurus. Since the news and pictures were sternly repressed, the problem did
not arise. Even today I have been unable to discover just how many died as a result of the
demise of the Malakand, but streets and tenement blocks collapsed with most of the
unsuspecting inhabitants still inside them since the all clear had sounded some time earlier.

Miners came seemingly unbidden by train and by bus from North Wales to use their
skills to work day and night through the ruins in the hope of finding survivors, and
miraculously they did, including two sisters of eight and nine, entombed for five days. ( I met
one years later and heard her terrible story.)

When the miners returned to the coal face, they had their pay withheld for their period
of absence, and were officially censured by the Coal Board for 鈥榟indering the war effort鈥�.
Some of my meagre pocket money went into the collecting tins that were circulated to make
up for the lost wages.

The civilian death toll was nothing in comparison with the shipping losses in the Battle
of the Atlantic. Each day, by word of mouth, news came of Liverpool ships that would not be
returning to port, and Liverpool families now without a breadwinner.

In the early years of the war, shipping companies had a policy that if you were not on
the ship, you could not be said to be working. Sitting in a life-raft was treated as unpaid
leave. The result was that the pay packet sent with the letter of sympathy was usually small
鈥� especially if the vessel had been sunk on its outward voyage.

This policy did not go down too well with the next of kin and other relatives. Never
noted for their loyalty or sympathy to the ship owners, the aggrieved expressed themselves in
the manner to which they had been accustomed.

My father described to me how a large crowd, comprising entire families with young
children, had arrived and burst into the offices of a shipping company and, failing to get
satisfaction, had forcibly removed the protesting staff along with the safe. This had been
smashed open in the street with sledgehammers, and the contents distributed among the crowd
before the police could assemble sufficient force to move in.

There has never been anything but a spirit of wary enmity between the labouring class
of Liverpool and the police force. Each side knew the rules, which did not include the phrase
鈥榗ome along quietly鈥�. 鈥楶olice brutality鈥� was not yet an expression in the Liverpool vocabulary.
No march or protest could expect a calm police escort. Confrontation was the name of the
game, and police practice was to break up any gathering before it could get organised and
armed for defence.

Liverpool police truncheons were commonly two-and-a-half feet long, made of hard
wood with a leather thong in the handle. A blow from one of those and you were either a
hospital or a mortuary case. We had one at home, kept in the hall cupboard. It had been found
in the gutter by my father after a riot where someone, armed with something even heavier, had
got the best of the brief encounter.

I was a witness to one of these 鈥榗onfrontations鈥�. It was just after Hitler had made a peace
offer to Britain in the Reichstag, conditional on his keeping his conquests. He even dropped
leaflets.

On a shopping trip to the city centre with my mother, I watched a colourful parade with
banners 鈥� 鈥楨nd the War Now鈥� 鈥� marching past St. George鈥檚 Hall. There was even a band.
Suddenly, there was the sound of whistles, and policemen, many on horseback, charged out
of side streets straight into the march, which promptly dropped the banners and instruments,
and scattered. They were followed by what were known in the city as 鈥榖attle-wagons鈥� 鈥�
reinforced vans filled with policemen who then used them as mobile prisons or ambulances.

Mother and I took hasty shelter in the entrance hall of the Empire Theatre, and listened
to the mayhem going on outside. Suddenly the doors burst open, and a spectre, his face
covered in blood, staggered in and collapsed at my mother鈥檚 feet muttering something like
鈥渉elp me鈥�. The manager, after finding old theatre billboards to soak up the blood, summoned
a doctor who, to my great surprise, made the repairs with a needle and thread as if it was
merely a torn jacket, and not a torn scalp and cheek.

The patient, who told us his name was Ken and was a Quaker, had a pacifist leaflet in
a pocket of the bloodied jacket. It was found by a policeman that mother had summoned while
Ken was given a cup of tea by the lady running the box office. The policeman called him 鈥楲ad鈥�
and crumpled up the leaflet. 鈥淚f I had found this on you, I鈥檇 鈥榲e rightly taken you into custody
for ...鈥�, he hesitated to find the word, 鈥漵ubversion, which means helping 鈥榠tler. But I didn鈥檛
find it, and so now you get a bus and get off 鈥榦me.鈥�

We lived with restless fear bolstered by instructive posters telling us what to do in the
event of a gas attack, and there was the suggestion in the slogan 鈥楥areless Talk Costs Lives鈥� that
German spies existed in their thousands, at every level of society, all radioing information direct
to Hitler. This belief was fostered by radio broadcasts in English from Germany.

鈥楲ord Haw Haw鈥� (William Joyce) in one broadcast impressed his listeners by announcing
that the store in Liverpool 鈥渙wned by the Jews at the bottom of Brownlow Hill鈥� would be
bombed. Right on cue Lewis鈥檚 was hit by incendiaries a few nights later, and would have been
completely destroyed except that the fire services were prepared and had connected their hoses
to the swimming pool of the nearby Adelphi Hotel. My mother, who before she was married had
worked there as a pool attendant, was outraged at this invasion of Liverpool鈥檚 premier hotel in
order to save 鈥渁 cheap shop I would never be seen dead in鈥�.

Although we had no daylight bombing, I cycled the two miles to school with many
repeated warnings of what to do in the event of being caught in the open in an air-raid. Hearing
the sound of an aircraft I made the error of gazing into the sky instead of at the road and
suddenly found myself cycling through carefully tended allotments scattering vegetables. I was
seized by the enraged allotment holders and locked in a shed while my father was summoned.
It lost me a week鈥檚 pocket money and it remains a memory as I was unable to afford my sweet
ration of a 2oz bar of chocolate. The following week there was no chocolate available only some
unpleasant humbugs. Life was very unfair in wartime.

When our playground at Liverpool College was buzzed by one of our own aircraft 鈥�
mistaken by nervous schoolboys as a German fighter intent on machine gunning us 鈥� I finished
head down in a muddy ditch; my friend Steven broke his collar bone carelessly throwing himself
over a wall, while another boy knocked himself out trying to get though the classroom door
without opening it first. We were all still shaking hours later when parents came to collect us.

It was not, in the end, the bombing that finally unnerved my parents. Nor was it the sight
of trigger-happy, armed troops and armoured cars that had now taken to touring the streets of
the suburbs. It was rumour. Father had been told, in strict confidence by his oldest friend,
whose brother had a friend with a cousin who knew someone related to a man in high position
at the Ministry of Defence in London, that Hitler was going to launch his invasion of Britain not
on the south coast but from Ireland.

According to this 鈥榬eliable鈥� source of information, Ribbentrop had made a secret deal
with President Eamon De Valera of Eire and, in return for military bases in the Irish Republic,
Hitler would arrange to unite Ireland. Churchill knew of the plan and expected Liverpool to be
the port Hitler wanted. If proof were needed of this extraordinary and most unlikely plan why,
our informant stated, had three huge sea forts, in full view of the populace, been towed out to
sea and anchored to the sea floor in Liverpool Bay?

I have an abiding memory of my mother and me, with two small suitcases, leaving
Liverpool late on a wet night in 1941, sitting in a carriage of a train, its windows coated with
blue paint so the feeble carriage lights would not be visible from the air. Every seat and the
corridors inside were filled with young, silent, reluctant recruits for the RAF. Even though it
was July and I was wrapped in a tartan car rug, I shivered in the ghostly blue twilight during
the long journey to the comparative safety of the countryside. We were refugees. I kept
repeating this as though it was a punishment for some unknown and never to be admitted sin.
I remember wishing that they had sent me to Canada. I remember wondering if I would ever
see my bicycle again.

ends

* 'Mind My Bike' was a catchphrase from the 大象传媒 radio comedy programme ITMA starring Tom Handley.

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