A Liverpool Fireman

I was born in 1949, so of course knew nothing of the War except for having a ration book.
My father joined the Fire Service as he was a Market Gardener, so could continue to grow his crops when he wasn't on duty.
The first day the new recruits were assembled awaiting their instructions, when a Fire officer entered the room and asked if any of them could drive, my Dad put his hand up as he owned a motorbike. To his horror they were taken outside and he was told to take the Fire Engine and crew through the Mersy Tunnel to Liverpool. To this day he didn't know how he managed to do it, but he did, and later on he even received an award for safe driving of his Fire Engine!
He tended not to talk a lot about things he had endured, but one story is of four days and nights when the bombs rained down on the docks of Liverpool, and they just fought the fires non-stop. There was no chance to get back to a canteen, and they existed on tinned peaches found in a burning warehouse, a luxury seldom seen during the war. When the bombing eased they were totally exhausted, and Dad found a place to sleep on a snooker table in a club, he slept straight through the whole of that day, even failing to wake when a bomb fell unexploded into the room next door...
When times were quiet the men were trained in the latest techniques, and one showed them how to put out a fire by covering it with foam like a giant Walnut Whip. Dad and his collegue were called to Park Station in Birkenhead to a petrol tank on fire next to the railway station, they duly applied the walnut whip process, the flames went out, and they returned to the station. A short while later there was a huge explosion which blew out the entire embankment, stopping the trains for three weeks, no-one had bothered to tell them the new technique didn't work on an underground fire!
My Dad didn't tell us any gory details, but in later years I remember being on Moreton shore when a dead body floated in. It was gross, hugely swollen and green, and everyone stood holding hankerchiefs to their faces and feeling sick. Not my Dad, he waded in and pulled it out, saying he had faced much worse in the War...
In many ways the war made him the man he became. He was awarded three awards for bravery in his lifetime, from I believe the Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society, for things such as rescuing a trapped woman from behind a horse and cart, and stopping a runaway horse and lorry careering through the centre of Liverpool.
I doubt any of the firemen are still alive today, but what brave men they were, I am so proud of my Father.

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