Liverpool bombing

This story appears courtesy of and with thanks to The Liverpool Diocesan Care and Repair Association and James Taylor.

Janet Langley, born in 1916, recalls the harrowing events that occurred when the war broke out :

We had the black-outs, then we had the air raid shelters, then I started having my second son. I was in Sefton General with him. My husband as was then, was in the Navy, he used to be away for very long periods, then he’d come home and I’d fall for another kiddie. I had a brother, he was only about one year younger than me. He joined up, just as the war started, he had been a brick layer and he went down to Hertfordshire and he wasn’t there very long. He didn’t have to join up, but he volunteered for the Royal Marines and of course, he went over on a ship called Lancastria, it was a big liner and he got to Dunkirk, but unfortunately when the Germans started to advance they loaded all the boys back onto the ship, he got put down in the bowels of the ship and it took a direct hit. I think there were only three people saved off that big liner. When Vera Lyn used to come on the radio singing, ‘We’ll meet again’ and ‘There’ll be blue birds over’, I used to cry. I missed him dreadfully, he was only twenty.

Can you tell me about the bombing in Liverpool itself?

Yes, Wellington Avenue took a direct hit, Smithdown Road, then Oxford Street Hospital, Wellington Avenue coming towards Gainsborough Road, there was a direct hit there. A gentleman who lived by me was an A.R.P Air Raid Precaution or something like that and he went to Wellington Avenue and he saw these two legs sticking out of the rubble of one of the houses, he tried to dig the person out, but it was only a pair of legs, no body, no head, nothing just a pair of legs. Do you know, that man had a nervous breakdown, he died soon after, he must have been so upset. It was amazing how people survived, now I think we are in better conditions health-wise that is. Food what there was, was good food, not fatty or sweet. I don’t know whether it was your spirit or not, but we survived it all, it could have been because you had to stay well for your kiddies.
One particular time my son wasn’t well so I trotted pushing the pram. During the war, you didn’t know whether there was going to be an air raid, whether you’d got to where you were going or not. When I was coming out of the Children’s Infirmary and air raid started, so the sister said, “You must leave that pram here, you can’t take him home in a pram, you must get the tram home,” so I got this number eight. When it reached the Sefton General stop the driver shouted. “All out, I’m not going any further.” Well there I was, I had no bottle no dummy, nothing, running trying to get him home, this air raid warden shouted, “Where you going, where you going?”. The shrapnel was falling around us by this time. I said, “I’m going home”, he said, “You can’t go home, where do you live?” I said “I’m going to my aunts in Blyth Street.” “Oh, I’ll get you in somewhere, you can’t go any further”. He eventually got Alan and I, Alan at this time, was crying his little heart out, he got us in with the vicar and his daughter. There we all were, sitting under the stairs on a big boxed-spring mattress. It was funny you know, thinking about getting to my destination and getting Alan home. You never know the minute really and although you were in an air raid shelter you’d hear this bang and used to think, right you’re next. You really thought that you were going to be the next ones to be killed. You used to get fed up, you’d go off to sleep in the house, off would go the siren, you got yourselves into the shelter, they’d stop and you’d come out , sometimes it would go on all night so sometimes you’d fall asleep in the shelter and wake up in the morning cold. These shelters would only protect you from so much, if it got a direct hit, well that was it, you were dead. They had concrete tops on, this kind, they were supposed to be ever so safe.
I remember hearing on the radio, a list of places that the Germans were going to be bombing that night, it was read out by that fella, they called him Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce). The railway got hit in Wavertree, quite a number of places did there, I had one aunt who lived in Edge Hill, well she was bombed out. Her husband used to do this plane spotting, he used to stand on roof tops of big buildings. The docks were hit very badly, I remember the night the town centre went on fire (with the bombing), all the shops Lewis’s, Blacklers, oh God, I cried all the ruins, Lewis’s managed to re-open in a tiny little space, they had every department.

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