If you, or a friend or relative, has a story to tell about life in Liverpool during the Blitz, and would like to be featured on the Liverpool Blitz 70 website then we’d love to hear from you!
Please send your accounts (with relevant photographs if possible) by email to victoria@cokebusters.com or by post to “D-Day Revisited”, The Armoury Building, Hawarden Aviation Park, Flint Road, Chester, CH4 0GZ. All photographs received by post will be scanned and returned to the owner, so please ensure you provide a return address.
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As a 7 year old I wondered what the German airforce had against me. Within 2 days in May they bombed my school (Beaufort Street) and then demolished the chip shop at the top of our street (no joke !). When Bewey was bombed it was a while before the pupils were allocated other schools. I went to Wellington Road and enjoyed playing in a playground on the roof – although I lost count of the balls that went over the top never to be recovered !
My other playground was the bombed out shops and buildings around my home and in town (Liverpool city centre), when I used to jump the No.1 tram with Georgie Evans, Billy Boyle and the rest of the lads from Beamish Street to go collecting shrapnel from the various bomb sites. I got into a lot of trouble with me Mam because of the holes the shrapnel made in my pockets.
When the chippy got bombed there was an unexploded bomb in the cellar. We were evicted from our house by the police and told to go to a place of safety. Believe it or not, the family went to stay with my eldest sister Louie in Warwick Gardens, which was about 50 yards from the docks and was getting bombed morning, noon and night. Some place of safety !
Although now living in Hampshire, I hope to be on parade with my old comrades – King’s Liverpool Regiment – to commemorate what for me was one of most memorable parts of my life.
Well done Uncle Jim, wish we were there to watch your parade today. Nan Lilly would have been so proud of you. Sending our love and best wishes to you all from Australia!
Neil, Kate and Max x
what a lovely story, well told. thank you
I was just over 2 when the war started and my father went into the army. He was taken ill and when he returned to duty he found that his regiment had gone, but while he was in Holding Depot the call went out for anyone with firefighting experience. My father had been an auxiliary fireman at Hoylake and was detached to the National Fire Service in Birkenhead.
He was at the Whetstone Lane station and found a room for my mother, my baby brother and me at 6 Quarry Bank, off Whetstone Lane. It was a tiny front sitting room converted into a bedroom and living room, so one day he found us a flat in Christchurch Road.
I can remember walking along the side of the art gallery, turning left then right and, just as he was about to take us up to the flat we heard the wail of the banshee; the air raid siren. My father showed us into the basement that served as a shelter. I was two months short of my 4th birthday at the time.
I do not remember the next morning but my mother told me that, when dad arrived home I screamed the place down. Bombers had hit the Vacuum oil plant at the side of Poulton Bridge and he was on the turn-table ladder pouring water on with smoke and fumes and other muck coming up at him. The only protection he had was a boiler suit and a steel helmet, so he was as black as a chimney! As he was cleaning up he told my mother that we had a very lucky escape because a bomb had landed in the front of No 6 Quarrybank and brought the whole front of the house down and that, if we had stayed just 12 hours longer, we would have been underneath the lot.
On another occasion his watch were in the pub at the back of the station when the bells went down and they shot off, only to find that it was a false alarm but, as they turned to go into the yard from Vincent Street, one of the crew said, “Ayy Where’s the pub?” In the short time they had been out a bomb had hit the pub and demolished it with the loss of two lives, twenty minutes earlier and they would have got a full watch of firemen as well. The site of that pub is now the Salvation Army Citadel, opposite Netto.
After the blitz ended he went back to the army but this time to the Army Fire Service and and was posted to No. 6 Army Fire Service Company and this unit went into Normandy five days after D-Day and spent quite a lot of time putting out the fires in Caen.
When I was 19 I joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and my first posting was to the Military Hospital in Chester and both I and, even more so, my father was surprised to see that the hospital had its own fire station manned by No 6 ARMY FIRE SERVICE COMPANY.
Don Johnson
ex RAMC but still living on Wirral
Saturday 3rd May 1941 was a lovely warm day, just the weather for a wedding. My Mum,and my Gran (Mammy) left Moreton on the bus to the Seacombe Ferry landing stage to board the ferry for Liverpool. I was very frightened when I saw half a boat sticking out of the water, it was the ferryboat Daffodil, sunk by enemy action. Can you imagine what was in my mind? I was only five.
We went on the tramcar to my Aunts house at Northumberland Terrace, Everton and met the rest of the wedding party, it was exciting as I was wearing a Shirley Temple dress, navy with white spots and buttoned down the front, and a huge bow of navy blue satin in my hair. We all went along to St Georges Church for my cousin Rose to marry her lovely John. Then we all went back to the house for the wedding breakfast and a big party! Around 11 o clock or thereabouts, the sirens went off and Mammy said we were all to go to the shelter. Quite a few said no they were enjoying themselves, but we did as we were told.
After the terrible sounds going on outside, someone said people were in an awful state in another road, so the Bridegroom and Bestman went off to investigate and they were never seen again. My Mammy took a girl to the toilet in my aunts house, and they were never to come out as bombs dropped on the house and 16 friends and family perished. I was upset because I had left my new ribbon on the mantle piece. We were dug out of that shelter and landed on the roof. As a little kid thank God I didn’t really understand it all. 70 years and I still remember that bright blue day.
Thanks Lil, I am so glad you have written this account down. Now the rest of the family can keep a record of this tragic time. So glad you survived to tell the story. Ann xA.Mitchell
Hello Lil, thank you for your account of that tragic day in May 1941.
It is so interesting to me as I was born in Northumberland Terrace on May 28th 1939 and lived with my family in the house opposite your family’s house until the night of the bombing. Yes my Gran (Ma), my Mum and Dad (who was in the army serving in France), my brother John and Sister Sheila along with my Aunts, Nancy, Julie and Louie all lived together in that lovely four storey house in Everton. I have heard a number of accounts of that fateful night so my story is as follows:
When the sirens sounded all the family went down into our basement which my Dad had converted into a temporary living and sleeping area, instead of us all running off to the air raid shelter. I was told that while we waited in the basement the family heard the planes overhead and the terrific sounds of bombs exploding. Then suddenly it went quiet and they heard a sort of swishing or flapping noise and the coals in the fire completely turned over. The reason for this was that a land mine had been dropped from a plane and was descending towards our houses on a parachute. On hearing this sound the family quickly ran to shelter under the basement stairs, by doing this it saved our lives as the bomb then landed on the houses opposite, including Lil’s family home, demolishing them completely. The houses on our side collapsed on top of us, luckily we survived with cuts and bruises and had to be dug out of the house by the wardens. Yes Lil you and I we were the lucky ones to survive such a terrible night. Thank you once again for your story.
Regards Jeanx
A SCHOOLBOY IN LIVERPOOL
I was 6 when the war started in 1939. I remember the day well. We were at the last day of a holiday in Blackpool. I think it was a Sunday morning, and we were in a rock shop, and everybody was listening to the announcement on the radio. When we arrived home our anderson shelter had already been left in our front garden, and gas masks were issued shortly afterwards.
During the early days of the war the schools were closed and we had to go in small groups to local houses to do our lessons. It was about a year before the first real air-raids started. And then they got worse until the May Blitz…
During the May blitz in 1941 we would go straight into the Anderson shelter in the garden, in which my Father had made some makeshift bunks from doors. He had made a steel door, out of some sheets of metal, for the opening. We had a small paraffin lamp, for light and heat. The sound of the sirens would start (a terrifying sound ) and we would wait for the sound of anti-air craft fire, and then the drone of the German planes, followed by the sound of exploding bombs.
I would be praying to myself for them to go away (I had only just had my 8th birthday a couple of weeks earlier). After a while it would go quiet and I would think they had gone. Only to return, wave after wave. Then the relieving sound of the ‘all clear’ would bring yet another night to a safe end. Although on one occasion, I remember the all clear didn’t sound at all. It was the night an ammunition train was hit and explosions continued through the morning. The blast of one, I felt while standing at the door.
On another occasion a raid had started before we got to the shelter and when I was nearing the entrance I heard a swish pass me, followed by a bang. The following morning we found a long jagged piece of shrapnel embedded in a bin alongside the shelter. It seemed as if I had a lucky escape!
After air raids, the following mornings we would go collecting shrapnel and looking at bomb damage. Locally there was damage at various places. The shops on Swanside Parade were badly damaged. There was bomb damage to houses on Prescot Rd. adjacent to Ackershall Avenue, Grant road, and several houses were flattened by a landmine in Reeva Rd. Bombs also fell on the coal sidings at Knotty Ash. Sainsburys stands on that site now.
We went to the city to see the devastation there. In the evenings we would hang around the street in the blackout and if it was overcast I remember it was black. There were no lights visible at all, and you could hardly see even a couple of feet in front of you. The curbstones, trees and lampposts had white bands painted on them to help you see them. We would then go home and prepare for the air raids, a terrifying experience for me.
It was around this time I remember there were four boys who has found a shell of some description on some wasteland near to the Boundary Pub. They had started throwing stones at it and it exploded killing them all. I recall at least one of them attended Grant Road. school.
Some of the clothes worn at that time (1941-44) were Flying Helmets, smaller versions of RAF pilots headgear. Also balaclavas. Clogs were a common form of footwear, because of the shortage of leather boots and shoes, and I often saw children in other parts of the city in bare feet. Corduroy shorts and wind cheaters were also worn by many. Clothes were rationed then and you were issued with a limited number of clothing coupons. Some parents, my own included, bought coupons from other parents who couldn’t afford the clothes anyway.
Food rationing started early in the war: meat, butter, sugar, sweets (sweets weren’t rationed at first, because there weren’t any!) etc. Later bread and cakes were also included. Eggs were in short supply and the Ministry of food issued dried powdered eggs. Meat was still on ration in 1954 when I had to take my ration book with me to do my army service. Vegetables weren’t rationed but were in short supply and people were encouraged to “grow their own”, which my father did, planting in our back garden! Where we lived in the square in Newnham Crescent we were allowed to rent the ground in front of our house. My father used to give us a penny for every bucket of horse droppings we collected for manure. A bin was put out in the street by the Corporation for people to put their waste food into… this was then used to feed pigs. Everything was recycled in those days!
There were plenty of horse drawn vehicles. I remember the bin wagon was horse drawn, as were coal and milk… Mr. Sowerby used a two wheel float drawn by a trotting horse. We had to take a jug out, and he would ladle the milk from an urn.
The Co-Op laundry vans were powered by gas, which was carried in a large silver coloured textile bag on the roof. Also Utility buses, which were like articulated trucks sometimes powered by gas, which was in a small trailer at the back.
Toys were pretty much unavailable during the war, the only things you could get hold of were homemade from wood.
The tram windows had cheese netting glued to the windows to stop flying glass and a small piece was kept clear by each seat so you could see where you were. The bulb in the lighting inside were painted dark blue for blackout purposes.
In the early part of the war the houses on the, then, new Woolfall Heath estate, were fenced off and I believe used at first to accommodate aliens before transport to the Isle Of Man. Later, about 1942, they were used for Italian POWs. These prisoners were later allowed to leave the compound. They were dressed in British battle dress, dyed purple, with a large yellow diamond patch sewn on the back. Some of them used to go to the Granada cinema on Saturday nights. I think they were given this privilege after Italy surrendered.
There didn’t seem to be any animosity shown to them and when the National Anthem was played at the end of the film, they always stood up.
About the same period, part of Alder Hey hospital was used for British wounded servicemen. They used to wear sky blue suits, with a white shirt and a red tie. Those of them who were fit enough were also seen walking outside.
Emergency Water Supply (EWS) tanks were built. These were usually circular structures, about 30′ in diameter and 5′ high, built in brick. Locally there was one opposite the Knotty Ash Pub and, if I remember right, one by Calvary Church. A boy was drowned in one situated next to a church in Kensington close to Low Hill. Another feature I remember was a pill-box built along side Knotty Ash station. It was cement rendered and then painted to look like a sweet shop as its camouflage.
Around 1942-3 we were in Prescot Road when we saw these strange looking military vehicles with white stars painted on their sides. They were carrying troops wearing helmets we didn’t recognise. It turned out of course they were Americans. At that time we as kids didn’t know much about them and their arrival was unannounced for obvious reasons. These trucks, in convoy, seemed endless, traveling from the docks towards Huyton. Other things we used to see were RAF trucks carrying aircraft fuselages and wings.
During these years we kept scrapbooks with maps of the war progress. These comments are just a small part of the events I remember from those days.
Derek Hyamson
After reading these comments it reminds me of how lucky we are today and how important it is to remember what the people of Merseyside went through all those years ago.
As one of the organisers of this event I would like to personally invite you all to come along and take part in the Parade at 10:30am on Saturday 30th April and indeed the rest of the events… this is your time, you went through it and have earned the right to parade through your city with the union flags (and Spitfires) flying once again.
Although I was coming up to my 6th birthday I can remember a lot of events that happened during the blitz.
I lived with my grandmother, my aunt Louie my mother and my baby sister Pat
We lived in a row of houses in Grandison Road Walton opposite Florence Melly School.
During the air raids a mobile search light and ack-ack gun would park on each corner of the school and the gun would start firing.
One night some incendiary bombs landed on the school roof and all our neighbours formed a bucket chain and the men got on the roof to put them out.
A few years later my aunt and uncle who had been a tram driver and a clippy, told how the trams use to keep running during the raid so to get key workers to the docks and factories etc. and sometimes the German planes would follow the sparks from the trams overhead trolley.
Around 1943 my aunt was drafted to repair damaged aircraft.
As a medical student in May 1940 I volunteered with a number of others to help identify some hundreds of dead people killed in the May Blitz. They were laid out in a covered carpenter’s yard in a street off Smithdown Road as the tiny mortuary opposite, managed by a Mr George Washington, could hold only half a dozen bodies.
I was allotted a room containing about fifty dead and was supplied with a pencil and a pile of large envelopes. I had the job of retrieving all the effects from the corpses and writing the name on the envelope. In those more sexist days the women medical students were put in an office to record, from the collected envelopes, the names of those killed- as many people had no means of knowing who was dead or who might be missing.
Almost every one of the casualties had their small insurance book on their person which made identification easy. Those who lacked this usually had letters or other documents with their names on.
Unfortunately the room was so crowded that I was forced to sit on one body while examining another and to eat my packed lunch in the same position. It took me four days to deal with every one in the room. Some had horrific injuries. There was a sack propped up in a corner with a note ‘Remains of three women from the corner of xxxxxxxx Street’ The smell was truly terrible. It remains a sad but gruesome experience and one that I shall never forget.
I would like to know if any body remembers St Anne’s school being bombed? It was in Chatham Place in Liverpool 7. Thanks
I believe St Anne’s School in Chatham Place was bombed on the 13th of March 1941. At least 8 people were reported to have lost their lives and the majority of these died whilst trying to help others:
MARTIN EDWARD BARWISE
died 13/03/1941, aged 35.
of 50 Troughton Street. Died at St. Ann’s School, Chatham Place.
ROBERT EDWARD DANIELS
died 13/03/1941, aged 38.
Air Raid Warden; of 22 Kinglake Street. Son of Martha Daniels, of 27 Dove Street, Lodge Lane; husband of May Daniels. Died at St. Ann’s School, Chatham Place.
GEORGE DEWAR
died 13/03/1941, aged 31.
Firewatcher; of 1 Derby Place. Died at St. Ann’s School, Chatham Place.
WILLIAM FLEMING
died 13/03/1941, aged 40.
Firewatcher. Husband of Martha Fleming, of 2 Derby Place, Shenstone Street. Died at St. Anne’s School, Edge Hill.
CHARLES GWILLIAMS
died 13/03/1941, aged 37.
Air Raid Warden. Husband of Margaret Gwilliams, of 9 Derby Place, Edgehill. Died at Chatham Place, Edgehill.
CYRIL NELSON READ
died 13/03/1941, aged 35.
Constable, Liverpool City Police; of 6 Stopgate Lane. Son of Henry and Fanny Read, of 13 Stanley Road, Oldfield Park, Bath, Somerset; husband of Muriel Christina Read. Died at St. Ann’s School, Chatham Place.
GEORGE HENRY ROCHE
died 13/03/1941, aged 5.
of 3 Nevison Street, Edge Hill. Died at St. Ann’s School, Chatham Place.
FREDERICK SMEE
died 13/03/1941, aged 29.
Firewatcher; of 7 Overton Street. Husband of Eileen Smee. Died at St. Anne’s School, Chatham Place.
Information courtesy of http://www.liverpoolremembrance.weebly.com
My Grandmother told me the story of her brother Robert Edward Daniels who died that day. He is buried with her in Allerton Cemetery along with his mother Martha, my nan, uncle William and a few others. He was my mother’s uncle who had been killed by “the Jerrys” before she was born. If there is any relation, I would love to know. Thank you,
David Lyman from America.
My late mother Doreen Spellman (maiden name) was 10 years old in May 1941. Before she died, aged 70, she told that her family had survived a direct hit on the house they occupied by hiding under the table and one of her sisters had a teapot blown out of her hands without sustaining injury. Unfortunately my Mum said a family that occupied another part of the same house all perished. She lived at 12 ILIAD street for some time, but I don’t know if that was the address involved – I wish now after reading your stories that I had shown more understanding and interest.
My Father was one of the dock workers who was injured in the huge blast from the SS Malakand on the 3rd May 1941. I was only 1 year old at the time, so I have no personal memory of him, but family legend says he was very musically gifted and much sought after to play his Accordion at family functions. He was at a wedding on the Saturday and stayed in Liverpool to go to work on the Sunday. As he reached the overhead railway that morning, the ship blew up and brought the railway down on him. He died in Walton Hospital on May 5th. I have never even seen a Photograph of him. I am now 72 years old and would give all I own just to have one conversation with my Dad.
John Stanley
Thank you so much for sharing your story with us John… it brings the tragedy to life and reminds us all that these losses are still very much in living memory and so should continue to be respectfully commemorated.
My recollections of the W.W.2…
I was 4 when it began remember my dad going away. My Mum had three kids and had to keep them on 27 shillings a week. Had to pay rent out of that too! Remember the night the holy land was bombed. As young as we were, we could not wait to see the bombed sites that were left. We used to go looking for shrapnel after any bombing.
My brother was evacuated to Tarporley, so just me and my sister. We had ration books to get food and clothing coupons. Once you had used your quota, you had to make do. We never had fresh eggs so used egg powder, and milk powder when we ran out of milk. I remember we used OXOs a lot and cocoa or camp coffee when we ran out of tea. Coal was hard to get, that was rationed as well.
There was no central heating in those days; you depended on your fires to heat the house. Never got much sleep. As soon as the siren sounded, we had to get down to the air raid shelter. We had a good air raid warden, he used to bring the kids a few candies. Young as I was remember a lot, but kids take things in their stride!
Does anyone know anything about the bombing of St. Athanasius school in Fonthill road in 1941?
I cannot find Fonthill road on the map of places bombed. I lived in Fonthill road and was definitely bombed out. We came to live on the Wirral with an aunt.
Hi Edith, I know St. Athanasius Church was bombed on 3rd May 1941 and Fonthill Road seems to also suffered casualties on 21st December 1940. I would suggest contacting local expert, Anthony Hogan over at http://liverpoolremembrance.weebly.com/
My mother Evelyn Yates at the time, lived in the Brookhouse Smithdown Rd during the war with her nine brothers and sisters. Her farher Charlie Yates was the manager. My mum often talks of her memories of the then glorious Brookhouse, during the war years She is 91 now. She also often talks about when the Luftwaffe dropped a bomb which landed on the bowling green and never exploded.
I would be so grateful for anyone who knew my mother or any of the family, or has memories / photos of the Brookhouse to reply here with contact details, thank you. Charles Barnes