I was 9 years old when the war started in 1939 and my first recollection is of the blackout and Air Raid Wardens shouting "Put that light out!" This rule was strictly enforced because German bombers were flying overhead every evening and any trace of light would help them find their way to their target which was usually Liverpool docks or Manchester. The Germans, headed by the wicked Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, started this war when they invaded Poland in September 1939 resulting in Britain and France declaring war on Germany. Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium and France and the British forces in Europe had to retreat until they were surrounded on the beach in Dunkirk. The evacuation of British and Allied troops from Dunkirk is another story but over 300,000 of them were successfully rescued and brought back to the UK. Hitler then dreamt of invading Britain and planned to reduce our resistance by cutting off our lifeline of supplies coming across the Atlantic from Canada and America. These vital supplies were transported by merchant ships which crossed the Atlantic heading usually for Liverpool which was the major port on our west coast. The Germans subsequently launched dozens of submarines called U-Boats which patrolled the Atlantic ready to torpedo and sink the merchant ships. Many were sunk and many brave merchant sailors lost their lives but some of the supply ships arrived to unload their precious cargoes in the heavily bombed and damaged Liverpool docks. To return to the beginning of my story: as I lay in bed listening to the bombers overhead, my dad worked nights baking bread in Horwich Co-op bakehouse. The Germans weren't interested in bombing a small three-man bakehouse but carried on across the UK to drop their bombs where they would do more damage as in Liverpool docks where most of the UK's supplies of wheat and flour were being unloaded from Canada. The blackout rules certainly hampered the German pilots and so they started to drop incendiary bombs. These were small metal tubes filled with ...