Fleeting Memories of WWII
Creators: name: Project Team, Their Finest Hour
Publisher: name: University of Oxford
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 430304
subject: British history
classificationCode: 430308
subject: European history (excl. British, classical Greek and Roman)
classificationCode: 430316
subject: International history

description: What follows is a series of very short memories I have of being a small child in (and immediately after?) the SWW. I ought to mention that I was born in October 1940, that my father was mostly away either in Catterick as a serving soldier, or training as a paratrooper - he was dropped into Arnhem) or actually fighting, that my mother (born in 1923) was very isolated and very young - only 17 when I was born and that Bootle which was also where I was born was heavily bombed because of its proximity to the docks. Her mother had died in 1933 and her father was a savage, drunken and violent brute who had thrown her out when she told him she was pregnant with me. She had almost no support - her remaining living brothers were older and both were soldiers and away. My father's brothers were also either in the forces or on war work. Consequently she was on her own. She had one younger sister who had been evacuated to Southport.
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<br>That was the background so now the few reminiscences I still have at 83 and going downhill...
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<br>My earliest memory is of being in the dark in a cot in a corner of my mother's bedroom. My younger brother had not yet been born - he was two years younger than me and I presume the result of oneof his leaves. I hear a noise, a banging and some flashes lit up the bedroom. the cot side was down so I was able to get out and go to the window. There I was fascinated because I could see pencils of light perhaps three or four or more swinging backwards and forwards. Of course at that age I didn't realise they were searchlights - they were just wonderful to see. That's one flash. Now the next....
<br>Very fleeting - just being carried under one of my mother's arms out of the house and into the backyard where there was a small metal arched structure where we got in and it smelt of earth and I didn't like it. That's it.
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<br>Next.....
<br>Again in my mother's arms being carried outside of the house in a hurry. We went into a a dark room where there were a lot of other people and only one naked light bulb. I didn't know till later that I ws in the air raid shelter directly constructed on the road outside our house maybe fifteen feet away in the road itself. My mam stopped near the swinging light bulb. I was in her arms and tried to get hold of it. Even now I can feel the heat of it... mam pulled me away and there were lots of smiling faces. End of reminiscence....
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<br>Just before the war ended?
<br>It's a warm day so I went outside. Across the road it was a hive of activity. Young men were working, building what I later knew to be prefabs on the site of houses bombed flat in earlier raids. Again I didn't know till later that these young men were actually POWs being used to put up the prefabs. My mother told me later. The workers put up a swing made of bits of rope and a bit of wood and sat me in it and pushed me as they walked past. I was also given rides in wheelbarrows. I remember laughing and them smiling and my mother and other women going out with cups of tea for the workers - there was no animosity.
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<br>A final note and really after the war was over but a consequence nonetheless of the war was my father finally coming home. I remember resenting him because my mother was obviously not giving us two boys her undivided attention. Nor did I like his deep voice orbeing picked and being handled by him - at least at first though that soon wore off. 
<br>Again two memories of the aftermath of the war which were quite vivid. Us children played out in the road most of the time - there was almost no traffic and what there was were milkmen and rag and bone men I remember mostly horsedrawn. We were able (occasionally) to get into the air raid shelter only a yard or two from our house and built on the road itself though normally it was locked. It was enjoyably scary. This e n ded when the shelter was demolished and that was a spectacular and memorable event for a six year old watching what seemed an enormous machine with a metal ball on the end of a chain smashing down the shelter. All that was left for years afterwards were the concrete marks on the setts of the road. The same happened to the shelters which had been put up in the school playground next door but one to our terrace.
<br>That's it.
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