For Cassie

The Blitz memorial at Pier Head, Liverpool

Now I blame Cassie for this post, (I should be cleaning the kitchen floor ) but I do have a little time before I take George to the vets ( he has a sore bum) so I will answer her post reply and type out another of my mother's wartime stories (as it was told to me as a child)

I mentioned in my previous post on the subject, that my mother,Uncle and Grandmother were caught in a bombing raid, as they hid in their home in the terraced housing area of Everton. Gran managed to cover the children with a heavy upturned settee before the windows were blown in, and unbeknownst to them all a parachute bomb had lodged itself under the neighbours kitchen floor without exploding.

When the raid was eventually over the family decamped to another neighbours house, in oddments of clothes ( the raid was at night so the children were in their nightclothes) My Uncle apparently was wrapped in a pair of chenille curtains and had on a pair of women's heeled shoes! which must have looked rather bizarre!

The family eventually moved in with their inlaws but the next day my Grandmother (who was incredibly brittle with her nerves) marched up to the now cordoned off street and demanded to be allowed into her home to retrieve certain items of cash and possessions she could not afford to have destroyed.

In our comfortable existence in 2009, I wonder if many of us could actually believe that someone could put their live in danger in order to retrieve some personal items, but I think it is important to realise that times were very hard for my grandmother in the early 1940s and they were in fact fairly poor. As a family, they could not afford to let anything be destroyed, even by an enemy torpedo!

Anyhow, my gran somehow talked the Air raid warden to let her into her home (remember there was an unexploded bomb next door!) and hand in hand they walked into her house reciting the Lord's prayer as they did so! (My mother would confirm this story as she watched the two of them ducking under the cordon at the end of their street) Gran collected the items she wanted, grabbed the cat and together they carried everything out.

She never once saw herself as a heroine!

My mother could tell a good story, but never "over- egged the pudding", when she discussed how she experienced the war as a girl.

I do remember, however how matter of fact she seemed to be as she told the story when she was once caught up in another raid. At 15 she worked in an ammunition factory, and she used to walk home with her friends after shift. As they did so one day the girls were caught in the open streets when the German bombers (empty after bombing the docks) turned for home over Everton. As the planes banked over the city, the rear gunners opened fire and my mother recalled placing a small cardboard suitcase which she used for her lunch box, on her head in an effort to protect herself!. With bullets raining down, my mother ran for home, separating from her friends..........She got home...they did not!

I could recall many other tales of the war as they were told to me, oral history is fascinating, I always think, I just wish that these stories could have been recorded years ago, when the memories were fresher and more detailed.....