Geoff Halligan was a very small boy during the air raids, not even four during the May blitz. One of his earliest memories is of the night the bombs arrived in Rosslyn Avenue in Maghull.

“The wail of the air raid sirens and the drone of bombers overhead prompted a hasty scramble down the stairs and into a huddle under the study dining table.

“One or two nearby explosions shook the house. An incendiary bomb bounced off the roof and blazed fiercely in the garden, much to the consternation of the local ARP warden.

“My dad, clad only in his long johns, feverishly worked at the stirrup pump. I still have the tail fin of that errant fire stick.”

It’s quite surprising that Geoff still has the incendiary bomb’s tail fins: pieces of bombs were traded quite gleefully by city children, especially the boys.

After an ammunition train had exploded in Clubmoor, the collectors were out in force.

Bill Courtliff, from Walton, remembers: “All the local lads went along to see what could be seen and, hopefully, to collect some souvenirs.

“Shrapnel was highly prized, but the nose of a shell-case was even better, because it had the numbers and rings for the settings on it. The morning after the explosion of the ammunition train, there were bombs and shells lying around everywhere – some of them still live, although we didn't know that!

“Kids were kicking them around and standing on the circular ones, balancing and rolling along like people in the circus.”

Eventually, peace came. Half-remembered fathers came back to the family. “I ran to my Uncle George saying a strange man was kissing Mum,” recalls Jim McMurtry, just three in 1945.

The children, just like the grown-ups would of course, never be the same again.

One boy, Jim Williams, remembers “Everyone felt for their neighbour, and that lasted for years.

Sometimes I think I lost my childhood, but other times I think I gained as well”

Liverpool’s Children in the Second World War is published by The History Press in paperback at £12.99. Pamela Russell will be signing copies in Waterstones in Ormskirk on Saturday at 1pm, and in Pritchards in Crosby at 11am on Saturday, November 21, and 1pm at Pritchards’ Formby store.