FORMER merchant seaman Alan Southworth witnessed the impact of World War Two on his native Bootle.
His family home on Stanley Road, near North Park, was blown up in the Blitz of December 1940 as the Luftwaffe tried to blow up the Leeds-Liverpool canal.
The 80-year-old said: "The Germans bombed about 20 yards away from our back garden, it took our house down and my grandmother's house next door, as well as the Richmond sausage factory.