No windows in anywhere. And the fires were terrible. It was terrifying. It really was. There was no water, no electrics, no telephone. The streets were simply just covered with debris. Holes where there’d been houses. The ambulances had an awful job getting to the casualties. I can only describe it as the worst night of my life.

The bombs dropped actually on Withnell Close. I mean, where I lived.
House next door but one, the little boy was killed, the little girl was badly injured. And there was hardly…well, there wasn’t a house left. We were admitting patients into Broad Green Hospital knowing perfectly well what was happening outside. They’d also bombed the air raid shelter which was underground. And I’d left my mother and my grandmother in the air raid shelter.

You subconsciously knew…that they were…
But you just admitted patients and didn’t really register who they were. You were there to do the job and you just got on with it.


Going from the hospital, 7 o’clock in the morning, all I could think of was I must get home and find out whether my mother and grandmother were alright. I only had mother. Father was killed in the First World War. She was very worried of course every time I went out during the war.

I met my auntie and she said that they were with a neighbour. When it [had become] so bad, he went up and took Grandma and Mum down. He’d taken them to a shelter deep under his house.

During the war a great sense of comradeship was evident; we all lost loved ones, at home or in the armed forces. In general you felt that if a bomb had your ‘name on it’, there was nothing you could do about it, so we just carried on and did our best to help each other, and thanked God for each day."

View Broadband Video - Villagers Donate: the JWO ran a Central Hospital Supplies Service, which provided much needed blankets, bandages and other soft goods for hospitals during the Blitz

Listen to Kathleen Thomas' story