ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝

In early 1938, at the age of 5, I had started school at Bromborough Pool Works School on the Wirral in Cheshire. The village of Bromborough Pool was a couple of miles from New Ferry and located close to the River Mersey. The following year, 1939, the 2nd World War broke out. I remember my father telling me, when I asked him what the war was about, that because Britain was a friend of Poland and Germany had invaded that country, then we had to help the Poles by declaring war on Germany. But, he said, the politicians thought the war would be over very quickly. Certainly within six months!

Soon we were all issued with gas masks, which were carried in small cardboard boxes with a loop of cord to hang around the neck. We were told never to go anywhere without them. There was also a ‘posh’ box made of leather , with a leather shoulder strap, to carry the gas mask for people who wished to be ‘smarter’! Families with very young children or babies were issued with what were called Mickey Mouse gas masks. These were quite large and the body of the child or baby was completely enclosed. The name derived from the appearance of the ‘head’ end that had two large clear plastic panels, just like Mickey’s eyes. Air-raid shelters were built across the road from the school for the pupils. There was a special locked cupboard in the shelter where we each had to keep a bar of chocolate in a small tin box with our name on it as ‘emergency rations’ in case we were in the shelter for a long time. The Head Teacher, Miss Kitchen, had the key!

These shelters were built almost everywhere, near bus stops, train stations, shopping areas, etc, so that people would not be caught ‘out in the open’ in the event of an air raid. They were simple oblong constructions of brick with a reinforced concrete roof and had bench-type wooden seats around the walls. They would protect against blast from a bomb exploding about a hundred yards away and from machine gun bullets, but would have been useless in the case of a direct hit or very near miss.

In addition to the shelters, other concrete ‘constructions’ appeared. There were two bridges in our locality on the main road to Chester, one over a river near the Lever Brothers Soap factory at Port Sunlight, and another over a railway line. At each end of the bridges, on both sides of the road, machinegun ‘pillboxes’ were built. These were, if I recall correctly, hexagonal in shape, about 12 feet across and had walls about 18 inches thick with narrow slits about 12 inches high that widened towards the outside to allow the gunners a wide field of fire. The pavement part of the bridges had solid concrete cube-shaped blocks about 5 feet wide and 5 feet high, set out at each end of the bridge, to form a sort of chicane that would allow pedestrians through and nothing else wider than about 3 feet. These were anti-tank and vehicle obstacles. The ‘cubes’ were removed quite quickly after the end of the war, but the pillboxes remained for years afterwards.

Food rationing had been imposed at the outbreak of war and each person in the family received a Ration Book. These contained pages of coupons with the letters A, B, C, D, and E etc, on them. Each book would have from one to three or four pages of coupons with the same letter depending on what ‘product’ category the coupons were for. Each letter stood for a particular kind of food. I remember E was for sweets! In addition to the money to pay, one had to hand over a certain number of coupons for a given allowance of food etc. The number of coupons required would be changed frequently, depending on the availability of the particular product. A Mars Bar might ‘cost’ 5 E coupons one month and 10 the next. The food available was strictly rationed on a per head per week basis. I can’t remember the exact quantities, but an adult ration of butter for a week might be just 2 ounces, and a couple of rashers of bacon and an ounce of cheese might have to last a week also!

The Ration Books were usually buff in colour but I remember there were different coloured books for people with special needs such as grey ones for women who were pregnant. I remember that occasionally neighbours would call to our door with the news that bananas or other ‘rare’ fruit like oranges or bananas were available in the local greengrocer’s, “for grey books only”! Clothing was rationed in a similar way, with special allowances for ‘special’ occasions such as someone getting married. In addition to the ration books everyone was issued with an Identity Card with a special individual number on it. Like the gas masks, these were supposed to be with you all the time because a policeman or soldier on guard duty might ask to see it at any time. Although, in practice, our parents always kept the cards for safe keeping in case we children lost them!

I was of course a member of a local ‘gang’ of lads from my own street. Every street and road seemed to have it’s own gang with it’s own territory. There were sometimes even two gangs from the same street. I remember, in the summer of 1940, when the word Dunkirk was on everyone’s lips and it appeared that a German invasion was imminent, there was discussion amongst us about what we would do if the Germans invasion took place. It seems quite bizarre now when I look back, but there was an almost unanimous decision in the combined gang of about twenty of us, that we would go as a group to the hills and mountains of North Wales where we would help the ‘Underground’ fight the German invaders! It was the older boys who told us the ‘Underground’ were the ordinary civilians who carried on the fight against the invader after their country had been over-run. We were sworn to secrecy because our parents would certainly have put a stop to our grand patriotic plan. In our childish naivety we had no idea of the grave consequences that would have followed if the Germans had invaded and we had carried out our plan. It just seemed to be the right thing to do!

When the German bombing raids started the dangers of the Blitz became very obvious and many of my friends, including my ‘best pal’, were evacuated to North Wales for safety and I didn’t see them for what seemed ages. Later, when it appeared that the worst of the bombing campaign was over, they were allowed to return home and my pal came back with some very strange words and phrases he had learned. They were Welsh and most of them were curses!

Because iron and steel was in very short supply, teams of men had been sent out soon after the outbreak of the war to remove all the metal railings from the front gardens of all the houses and anywhere else where the railings were merely ‘decorative’. The government made available an air-raid shelter for every home. I remember there were two main types, the ‘indoor’ Morrison, which was a strong steel cage designed to fit under a table or in a stairwell or cellar, and the ‘outdoor’ Anderson made of interlocking sections of corrugated galvanised steel sheet.

We had the Anderson shelter. It consisted of three or four pairs of sheets, depending on the required length, that were curved at one end so that when two were placed upright, opposite one another with the straight ends on the ground, the curved ends met at the top to make an arch and were bolted together. There were two sets of end panels, one set of which completely closed one end, and the other formed a small ‘doorway’ opening. Our finished shelter was about 6 feet long, six feet wide and just over six feet in height at the centre. Gaps in the joints were sealed with sacking and a tar-like substance. The whole thing was set into the ground to a depth of about four feet and the curved top covered with a very thick layer of earthen sods and sandbags. Our shelter had a concrete base and low concrete sidewalls, and was at the end of the garden. The entrance was about three feet from the garden end wall and had heavy ‘blackout’ sacking over the opening. My father had made a strong timber roof, also covered in earthen sods, between the shelter and the wall, a set of wooden steps down into the shelter and a raised slatted timber floor so we didn’t have to stand on the cold, and often damp even wet, concrete. My sister and I would be in our slippers and pyjamas if there were a night raid, and there could be puddles of water on the floor if it had rained during the day.

Whenever the Air Raid warning siren sounded it’s rising and falling pulsating wail we had to grab blankets and get down to the shelter as quickly as possible. My father and mother always made a Thermos flask of tea before going to bed at night in case of an air raid and that was also taken into the shelter when the siren sounded. You weren’t allowed to use torches etc, at night, so without any moonlight to see by, we could wander off the path down to the shelter and trample over the vegetables my father had planted to ease the food shortage. As our clothesline ran the length of the garden, my father tied short strips of white cloth to it at frequent intervals so we could find our way to the shelter in the ‘Blackout’.

Some of the men who were unfit for the armed services, or were in essential jobs, were Air Raid Patrol (ARP) Wardens and one of their responsibilities was to make sure that there were no exposed lights. One became used to hearing the loud shout of “Put that light out” if someone had unwittingly allowed a chink of light to show. My father had been declared unfit for active service because of a club-foot but had joined the ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝ Guard. He was often absent at night while on guard duty or patrol.

The headlamps on cars and buses were blacked out except for a narrow strip across the middle of the glass lens, and there was usually a hood fitted across the top of the lamp so it couldn’t be seen from the air. The interiors of the buses were very dimly lit. All the houses had to have thick ‘blackout’ curtains and the windows were often criss-crossed with strips of strong, wide adhesive paper tape to help prevent the glass shattering into lethal shards in the event of a blast from a nearby bomb. We kept a damp-proof box in the shelter containing matches and candles, and later we had the luxury of a paraffin ‘hurricane’ lantern. My father had built bunk type beds for my young sister and myself and there were two old chairs for my parents.

In addition to my sister and myself, our family then included a foster sister who was in the Women’s Auxiliary Air force. She worked as a plotter in the underground headquarters of the Western Approaches Command in Liverpool, so the shelter could be quite crowded if she happened to be home during a raid. If there was a lull in the bombing and you couldn’t hear any aero-engines throbbing in the sky, my mother or father would go quickly back to the house to make sandwiches and refill the Thermos with hot tea if the electricity and water was still on.

It was often very difficult to sleep during a night raid. We could hear the German bombers as they passed over our area, and wondered where they were going to drop their bombs. We learned to distinguish between the different types of bomber by the sound the engines made. Eventually, I could tell the difference between a Heinkel, Junkers and a Dornier bomber by their distinctive engine noise. One would hear the ‘scream’ of a falling bomb and wonder if it was coming down near our house. Then there would be a great bang and the ground would shake violently if it was close. Sometimes my father would bring me out of the shelter to see a German plane over Liverpool or Birkenhead, caught in the searchlights as it dropped its bombs and tried to avoid the shells from anti-aircraft guns.

During one particular major raid on Liverpool and Birkenhead in May 1941, which turned out to be one of the worst raids of all, he brought me out of the shelter at about 3 o’clock in the morning to see the brilliantly red-lit sky across the River Mersey as the city of Liverpool burned. Although we were about fifteen miles away, it was almost bright enough to read a newspaper by. The German bombers came back night after night for over a week. Several days later, he took me to Liverpool by the ferry that crossed the River Mersey to see the damage the bombing had caused. I can remember, as we walked over the crest of the hill from the Pier Head where the Mersey Ferry boats sailed to and from, being astonished by the areas the size of several football pitches which were just mountainous piles of the smouldering remains of buildings. Entire streets had simply disappeared and were now just heaps of rubble.

In the city centre there were twisted steel skeletons of what had been large department stores. The fires had been so hot that even the concrete cladding had burned away. One store in particular, Blacklers, which was supposed to be virtually fireproof because it was constructed of concrete and steel, had been so completely destroyed that there was hardly anything left standing. Several ships at anchor in the River Mersey had been sunk by direct hits and their masts and funnels remained sticking out of the water for a long time after the war had ended and the Mersey Ferry boats had to steer a course between the wrecks as they crossed the river.

Continued in Part 2

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