大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Maggie Smith from WM CSV Action Desk on behalf of Jacqueline Wilde and has been added to the site with her permission. Jacqueline Wilde fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

Some two years after the war had been on I accidentally burned my hands and so I was taken off operations which was switchboard and put on administrative duties which was more nine to five and our division decided to have a training officer so they asked me if I would like to help the training officer and be his training clerk. The training had always been done through the Central Fire Station but now each division was going to have its own training because when there weren鈥檛 raids they had to do so much drill each day on hose drill or pumping drill they had various things to do so they had to keep trained up for the latest piece of equipment so that they didn鈥檛 get rusty. We had to make a note of all the hours training each fireman did on the division. Well they never had this before so they gave us a table and a chair and said that is your office start from scratch. One of the regular brigade firemen had been made up to a company officer and he was my boss. So we set about making rules, regulations we had to make the cards that the training hours were put on. We had to absolutely start from scratch. After we had been going a few months and got into the hang of it, it was decided we could have a training school and so a large private boy鈥檚 school with grounds all around it was taken over in Edgbaston, it was called Penryn School. It was taken over by the fire service and we then had a proper training school, before then we just had an office in a house on the Hagley Road on the corner of Norfolk Road, it was our secondary control room. We outgrew Cambridge Street and they just kept Cambridge Street, it had a very large garage at the back for all the trailer pumps because not only did we have fire engines but there were a lot of private cars that had trailer pumps on the back of them so they had towing brackets fitted and they could get these little pumps out so if it wasn鈥檛 a large fire they sent these little pumps out at the beginning of the war which helped considerably. Anyhow, we went to the training school at Penryn. They used to have courses for the firemen and the officers and this went on for a good many years. I enjoyed the training because I used to go out with my boss to where they were doing the training either by the canals or the pumping stations and clock up the hours for the different firemen so it got me out of the office and I was able to travel round. Sometimes in the evenings when there weren鈥檛 raids on we鈥檇 play table tennis and this was something I liked very much and I was good enough to get into the area team of the fire service and we used to go round to other areas playing table tennis this was when we were off duty of course. So that if there was a raid it was immediately cancelled, I quite enjoyed being in the fire service, I was in for five and a half years and the companionship and the friendliness and the helpfulness amongst it was really something.

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