蜜芽传媒

World War 11. Memories of 1939-1945 in and around Bootle, Liverpool.
Author Copyright-Joan M. Dyer.
World War 11. Memories of 1939-1945 in and around Bootle, Liverpool.
Author Copyright-Joan M. Dyer
Chapter Five
How we came to move to St. John鈥檚 Road, Bootle, which was near the docks I do not know. It was certain that my Mother had an on-going contact with a certain lady called Miss Scattergood of Bootle Municipal Authority, as it was then called. In later years she told me that she waited and waited to try to get a house with a bathroom, and this was an essential with three children. Such houses were not readily to hand since the bombing, so it was not exactly an easy request. At some point we obviously were allocated to a requisitioned house, namely, 87, St. John鈥檚 Road. I have often wondered about the people from whom the house was requisitioned and what happened to them. Of course it could have been a landlord and the council had powers to requisition houses. My Father was still away in the army as far as I remember when we first arrived. The house was a red brick, bay window style Victorian edifice. To me it was enormous. Once more fear gripped me and I vividly remember going into the house, lit in winter by candlelight only. Huge shadows leapt on to the walls of what seemed a very large hall and stairs. My brothers relished the ghostly experience but as usual I was very scared. There were two bedrooms, at a mezzanine level a boxroom and the famous bathroom on a landing of their own, and an attic up a small flight of stairs. My Mother decided to make what would have been a parlour on the ground floor into her bedroom. Then there was a good sized living room with a black iron or steel cooking range consisting of an open fireplace, and two ovens at the side. A cupboard at one side became a shoe store. Later we had a piano but I do not remember this arriving. At the back was a kitchen, butler type sink, shelves and with an old style gas cooker with a door to the back yard. There was an outside toilet in a shed and a paved area of large Victorian paving stones. My Mum had a washing line there but she soon discovered it was useless because of the constant dust and smoke. She only used it on the hottest of days when things would dry quickly and therefore would not be out for very long. At the side was a gateway leading to a side passageway between us and the next house. We rarely used this in the early days and always came and went by our front door.
Most terrifying to me of all of this was the fact that there were cellars of very good size. Here there were two rooms, one with a washing copper and a coal cellar. The coal cellar had a shoot, i.e., a slope that rose to street level and an iron coal cover on our path above. This could be lifted when the coalman came to deliver coal and he would toss his sacks of coal down into the cellar. I did not want to go near any of this being dark and cold, but my Mother was in heaven with her copper and indoor space for us to play and a bathroom.
Eventually we had gas lights. These were a constant source of expense and caused us much scolding as they were made useful only with a gas-mantle. This was a very fragile, piece of apparatus being an impregnated piece of cloth attached to a small ring and they would last for quite a while. Unless, of course, you were messing about with pillow fights or you accidentally, when turning the gas up or down, knocked one and rendered it useless. They came in a small box and I even broke one once before getting it home.
I can just remember a bombed church, St. John鈥檚 and its ruined appearance opposite the house. Again looking across the road at its ruins was quite dramatic against either the moonlight or, as the front of the house faced due west, against the sunset. There were many bombed houses near us where the Germans had bombed Liverpool and were aiming to destroy the docks in the Bootle area. My brothers and I played in and near the bombed houses opposite a couple of times but I think my Mother must have soon put a stop to our ideas of grand adventures as the buildings were dangerous. On one occasion I asked my Mother why the houses had no roofs, windows or doors. I had wondered sometimes why nobody came to finish them. She explained to me that it was the bombing.
At the back of the house ran the Liverpool to Southport railway. This line also carried freight and there was an underground section that went down into a tunnel to the dockland very close to our house. The engines were huge and there was a gantry right opposite us with main signals. Many trains stopped here and many trains let off steam making a huge noise. As they moved off, heavily laden and with up to fifty trucks and a guards van, they made terrific juddering sounds as the wheels spun and the train groaned into action. As we grew older we used to amuse ourselves counting how many trucks there were with each train. When the trains went down to the tunnel which led to the docks there was a huge amount of noise, smoke and dust all of which my Mother battled with over many years. Finally the next premises to our house was the iron filing factory with its large chimney belching out smoke. We definitely needed a bathroom and my Mother had no washing machine of any sort as of today鈥檚 standards. Washing day was extremely hard work. She did most by hand using the copper to heat the water, the kitchen sink, bowls and the bath. (for large items). Although she had the copper she had limited money and resources to achieve really hot water. Later we had a small wringer you turned by hand. There were many houses in the road with none of these facilities so their lives must have been extremely hard. If you hung out the washing to dry it got covered in railway smoke, dust and coal specks plus the factory output detritus. One amusement for us children was to look at the town hall clock. This was Bootle Town Hall clock tower that we could see from the attic. We used the attic area in winter to hang washing and out of the small window, if you stood in the right place, we could see the clock. (Subsequently the houses were demolished.)
Unfortunately I do not know the exact details of my Father coming back from the war. We knew he was a prisoner in Stalag X11a or X11b and my mother was able to send letters and we received a Stalag or Red Cross communication from my Father. This was a card with two or three very short sentences such as 鈥淚 am well鈥�, 鈥業 am in hospital鈥�, and he was allowed to underline the one he felt was nearest to his situation. The card indicates he was in Stalag X11b but we have looked on the web and the war office information indicates that Stalag X11b was closed in March 1942. Also it seems to indicate that X11a was at Limburg. So was Stalag X11b reopened to accommodate new prisoners of war or were the cards just used in terms of what was available in what would have been a time of shortage for the Germans? We have always believed he was in X11b but there is conflicting information on this from the web.
Then my Mother saw in a newspaper a printed picture you could colour in and send to Germany. It was a Valentine with hearts and flowers type of thing. She asked me if I would like to colour it in, which I did. What, at the time of receipt, my Dad thought of what substantially was not a lot of use to him in his desperate situation I am not sure. My Father received it in Germany and for years after the war carried it in his wallet. I expect it gradually disintegrated. He always seemed very fond of it in later years.
Then there was V.E. day and I vaguely remember this but not very well. I am disappointed I cannot remember it better. All I remember was the atmosphere more than anything else, that everyone was more than usual happy and cheerful. There was a street party in St. John鈥檚 Road and I think I can remember tables in the street and thinking this was rather strange. Jelly also comes to mind, lots of jelly.
Of course my Dad was not yet home so for Terence, Brian and my Mum it was still a difficult time and quite a lot of uncertainty as to the fate of prisoners of war. How and when would they get back, how would they be in health and what was the future going to hold? I think it was about September 1945 when my Dad returned. We did not learn a lot about his experiences. I remember a thin, a very thin man at Lime Street station, then he seemed to disappear again and it went on like that. Eventually he was home for good. I remember being a bit resentful of this new presence in the house and I was not at all sure about what it was going to be like. We soon found we were able to go to Bickerstaffe on the bus and other little outings with our Dad. Later he encouraged us to ride on the Liverpool Overhead Railway, which we all did quite a lot. After that I can鈥檛 remember too much. There was talk about the future and my Mother saying he would never go back to dock work. After a time we learnt that he was to join the Post Office as an engineer.
My experience of my Dad was that he was a quiet man who liked peace and reasonable quiet. He liked to read the Liverpool Echo, go to work, come home, go and have a quiet pint at his local, listen to the radio and especially enjoyed the humourous programs such as 鈥楻ound the Horn鈥�. I never ever heard him complain about any single thing. As I grew older I realised that his quietness was not all good and although I did not know the word then, that he would from time to time become severely depressed. I always liked him coming home in the evening and sitting near him at the table eating his dinner he would give me a chip or some other delicious something which sometimes made my Mum cross as we had had our food. He returned to Bickerstaffe to do the garden and we went there too from time to time. Every Sunday off he went to have a meal with my Auntie Dorothy and Grandmother Crolley. This became a pattern in our lives in later years.
Our younger brother David was born in July 1946. Drama surrounded this time once more. The events were recorded in the Liverpool Echo. We were all at school not long before the baby was due and during the day an aeroplane crashed immediately in front of our house. It was a Mustang, I learnt much later. The pilot had bailed out and the plane came straight down and crashed into the road. My Mother hearing the noise had gone towards the front door as it actually happened and the door, and windows were blown out. My Mother was behind the door and it may have saved her and David鈥檚 life but it did land on her. A small child wandering in the street was killed at the end of our path. My first knowledge of this was on my way home from school when a boy met me at the end of the street and told me my house had burnt down and that everyone was dead. He told me the Police were there and that I could not go home. This in fact was not true but as I turned the corner sure enough there were Police and this gave me a terrible fright. David was born in July and had a birth mark on his back in the form of an aeroplane, we used to think.
David was a small baby and I remember the Doctor coming one day and telling my Mother to feed him every two hours. We all helped to achieve this by taking turns with bottle feeding David, even Terence and Brian. So we all have a tremendous closeness and David was soon a favourite member of the whole family. I suppose we had not had a lot of good times and a new baby in the family was just the ticket. We got a pram and I used to walk David in the pram, up and around the roads. Frequently Sylvia had come to see us so we would both have turns with the pram. When he was very young David was our 鈥榣iving doll鈥�! Great fun for us but we were always under strict instructions as to our 鈥榙uties鈥�. So we grew up in a very poor neighbourhood, my Mum and Dad and the four of us. We also remained in frequent contact with our Auntie Edith, Sylvia and our Grandparents while the latter were alive.
Joan M. Dyer. Author鈥檚 Copyright. 2004.

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