227127 Tony Blackburn Civilian I was born in 1938 and lived on the outskirts of Liverpool throughout the war. We had an Anderson shelter in the garden and I can clearly remember being dressed in my siren suit and taken down to the shelter, hearing the sound of German aircraft and the thump of the nearby ack-ack guns taking them on.
I had all the war-time privations - no sweets - never had an orange or a banana until I was about 7 years old. Also, no chocolate. I remember helping my mother bring home the rations. I also remember children at school who we all had to pray for because they had lost their fathers, mostly in the Merchant Navy. I did the usual things, like collecting shrapnel from the ack-ack guns and seeing aircraft fuselage being transported from Liverpool docks.
We had a black American regiment stationed near us who were very kind and threw chewing gum over the school hedge to us.
I remember the celebrations of VE night and VJ night and wondered why my mother and the other women were crying.
My father was a policeman during the war and he would sometimes be able to pop in when there was a bad Liverpool blitz to see if we were OK. My parents are now both dead but I only realised in later life what they had gone through and how they must have worried for me and my brother and sister. We owe their generation a massive debt.
|