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Toward the end of May the bombing was slacking off.
My folks decided to visit relatives, my mother’s brother,
and his wife and child, my cousin John.
John was a few years older than me. I looked up to him; he was my hero then.
Well we travelled by tram-car, they were mostly running normally, just a few minor detours due to bomb craters and fallen buildings.
Where they lived was close to a major rail siding that the Germans had tried without much success to destroy.
They had mostly managed to hit houses, which in a way was fortunate, there were usually ammunition trains using the rail there. One of those blowing would have caused a deal more damage.
There were also some small factories, I don’t know what they produced, but no doubt it would be something to do with the war effort.
The Germans had started to change their tactics. They had started to drop a lot more incendiary bombs. These did not blow as much as go on fire. They were not easy to put out.
Most houses had a thing called a stirrup pump, for pumping water, and a bucket of sand. People were expected to extinguish the bombs if they fell close.
I can recall seeing a group of older boys after a raid throwing a metal bin lid over a bomb, the heat melted the bin lid.
This Saturday night at my uncles was the wrong one to pick.
There was yet another air raid. This time the bombers were lucky. They managed to hit a small goods train. It was carrying explosives of some sort. The noise was horrendous; the blast blew out most of the windows in the houses. Closer to the blast there were a lot destroyed, with many dead.
We were safe, as we had gone into the bomb shelter at the start of the raid.
It was one my uncle had erected. They were called Anderson shelters. They came in kit form.
The idea was that you dug a hole, about six feet deep, and built the shelter in it.
One drawback was the lack of ventilation when the door was closed, plus the water that invariably rose from the water table. They tended to smell like an old swamp. They were also cold and very damp. But they did offer protection from anything other than a direct hit.
The following morning we were out collecting shrapnel, (bomb fragments and such).
It was a hobby that had caught on. I was really thrilled on finding the tail fin of an incendiary bomb. It must have snapped off at impact. Lucky me, they were all envious.
We went to have a look at where the bombs had hit. A scene of devastation to put it mildly.
One of the boys tried to find the house where his friend lived. It was gone, along with the whole family. Just wiped away.
There were fires still burning and the service people were still digging through the rubble looking for survivors and the dead.
We were soon moved on by the local bobby.
I suppose most children are a little callous, even these days. We certainly were.
We quickly pushed the death of the family to the back of our minds, and then it was decided to go into the city centre to see the damage caused there by the nights bombing.
There was quite a lot.
We could not get close; the police had cordoned off a huge area. Apparently there was an unexploded land-mine. These where just huge bombs that came down on a parachute. Usually they were fitted with a time delay fuse. The idea being that they would kill more by going off hours or days after the air raid.
On our way home from town the air raid siren sounded. A very distinctive howl. Everyone looked up at the sky. There had been many false alarms in the past, so most would wait until they were sure they were enemy aircraft before taking cover.
We spotted the aircraft silhouetted against the sky. It was one of ours.
Everyone, including us children, had become expert at recognising the silhouette of all aircraft. There were posters everywhere with them on.
Alarm over, more than likely some over tired warden mistaking the aircraft’s shape.
Monday morning and back home again, ready for school. Disappointed as usual that ‘Gerry’ had not bombed it for us.
So it was with my ‘jam butty’s’, (Liverpool for jam sandwiches). My gas mask in its cardboard case, in case of a gas attack.
I was off to school, a walk of about six miles.
No parental schools run in those days.
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