Ray Mitcham’s Story

Liverpool suffered from major attacks from enemy bombers during World War Two – reducing homes and buildings to rubble.

In Toxteth, South Liverpool; these buildings became a playground for a young Ray Mitcham: “To us, the bombed out buildings – they weren’t really bombed out buildings – but to us they were forts, and they were play things. We didn’t have any trees in the south end, we used bombed out floors as the way to climb.”

He does however have memories of the darker times of war as well: “I do remember being woken up and taken down to the bomb shelter, pitch black, absolutely stunk in the shelter, but we certainly felt safe in there.”

On 8 May 1945, the shelters would provide a platform for seven year old Ray and his friends to watch the celebrations: “We sat on the top of the shelter, while the grown-ups and the youngsters - the younger kids were all sat around the bonfire.”

“It was a wonderful street party; there wasn’t much food because at the time we were still on rations. We still had to go for meat, bread, sugar, sweets, everything was on coupons.”

There was however, as was the theme across Britain, a lot of singing: “They were singing some great songs, people remember the Liverpool cup final where they used to sing ‘ee-i-adio, we won the cup’, we heard that the other way, it was ‘ee-i-adio, we won the war.

“We went to bed around 2 o’ clock that morning, it was absolutely stupendous, I’ll never forget it.”

Image: Ray in his childhood