A couple of years before I was born, the German people, in what turned out to be a poor decision, allowed Hindenburg - a fat man with a big moustache, to make Adolf Hitler - a thin man with a small moustache, their Chancellor. And so in 1941, as part of his manifesto regarding world domination, Adolf decided to flatten Liverpool, with no thought for the fact that this was where my mates and I lived.
The result of this mad plan was that we had fewer toys at Christmas, a distinct lack of sweets and a number of seaside resorts were closed to paddlers. Sadly, school lessons went on more or less as usual, although we had to learn extra things like air raid drills, how to wear gas masks and sleep in air raid shelters. As if that wasn't enough, we sang daft songs like 'Roll out the Barrel' and 'Run Rabbit Run' to keep up our spirits. Worse still, it was another eight years before we had a holiday.
How did this affect us, I hear you ask? Well, it all started with the one great favour the deranged Austrian carpet chewer unwittingly did for a gang of six year olds, - he blew up our school.
(Incidentally, Hindenburg's full name was Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, so you can see it was all doomed to failure from the start.)
A couple of years before I was born, the German people, in what turned out to be a poor decision, allowed Hindenburg - a fat man with a big moustache, to make Adolf Hitler - a thin man with a small moustache, their Chancellor. And so in 1941, as part of his manifesto regarding world domination, Adolf decided to flatten Liverpool, with no thought for the fact that this was where my mates and I lived.
The result of this mad plan was that we had fewer toys at Christmas, a distinct lack of sweets and a number of seaside resorts were closed to paddlers. Sadly, school lessons went on more or less as usual, although we had to learn extra things like air raid drills, how to wear gas masks and sleep in air raid shelters. As if that wasn't enough, we sang daft songs like 'Roll out the Barrel' and 'Run Rabbit Run' to keep up our spirits. Worse still, it was another eight years before we had a holiday.
How did this affect us, I hear you ask? Well, it all started with the one great favour the deranged Austrian carpet chewer unwittingly did for a gang of six year olds, - he blew up our school.
(Incidentally, Hindenburg's full name was Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg, so you can see it was all doomed to failure from the start.)