SCARED by a sudden bang, frightened eight-year-old Phoebe Bailey climbed, in the pitch-black darkness, to get in bed with her slumbering mum and dad.
Alarmed by what she thought to be a scattering of large crumbs across the counterpane, she roused her parents briefly to ask: "Have you been eating biscuits in here?"
But they weren't biscuit bits at all! They were pieces of the bedroom ceiling - plaster and bits of lathes - which had showered down.
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The family, who had somehow slept through the wailing of the air-raid siren, were quick to realise that an incendiary bomb had shot through the roof of their home in Dorothy Street, Thatto Heath. And it had rested, unexploded, on the parents' bed! It had beern cushioned by the thick flock-mattress on which they slept.
The story of this remarkable bomb in the bed', a memory from the second world war, comes from Norman Owen of Clover Hey, Haresfinch. His cousin, Phoebe, later married former Saints player Bill Boycott. And the cousins, who recently met up at a surprise celebration at the St Helens police club, are delighted to share that incredible German air-raid memory.
At the time, the then little Phoebe shared the middle bedroom at the birthplace of Norman's mother. His mum was a member of a family of three brothers and seven sisters.
When the siren sounded on that fateful night people rushed off to the nearby council school shelter. Phoebe's family, deep in sleep, never heard the siren's warning.
Phoebe crawled into her parents' bed. Lying on her back in the bed, she slowly became accustomed to the black-out darkness and saw a big hole in the ceiling, above her head.
She woke up Fred, her father, who climbed out in his long-johns and lit the gas mantle. There was an even bigger shock. Higher up there was also a much larger gap in the roofline.
"Blimey!" said Fred, "there's a bomb in our bed."
He raced off to find an air-raid warden who arrived to put the small bomb in his bucket of sand and cart it off.
Norman says that he has a lot of relatives in America who keenly keep up with this page.The huge family who once lived at the Dorothy Street house included Norman's mother, with Nancy, Helen, Maggy, Matty, Bessie, Harriet, Molly, Billy, John and Joe.
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