大象传媒

I suppose my war started 18months before hostilities, due to the fact as a hospital pharmacist that I would be well qualified to join the Red Cross and train as an A.R.P instructor. This I did . The work consisted of training personnel in works and other private places with regard to dealing with poison gas attacks, fire bombs and first aid work. The work was carried out mostly in the evenings over a fairly wide area of Birmingham.

Fearing the worst I decided some less vulnerable place than Birmingham to live. I found a place midway between Birmingham and Bromsgrove(where indeed we lived until 1948). My wife and newborn baby I sent to Blackpool to some relatives where they lived for some 6 months until the early panic had died down. I was doing my A.R.P work and working at the control centre in Bromsgrove 2 or 3 nights a week and fire watching 3 nights so did not have a lot of time at home. We had been apart for some six months with only very intermittent communication so I was very happy for them to return.

We then had the problem as so many other people had of living. We bought some hens converted a shed into a hen house gave up our ration of eggs in return for hen food. This worked very well. Together with some neighbours we built an air raid shelter, this took some time as it was virgin ground very hard and compacted. There were some bad nights when we were very glad of it. One very bad night when the bombs were falling in Birmingham and I was at the control centre in Bromsgrove I was spotting incendiary bombs dropping around my own house. The house had no telephone (no new phones were available until 1947) so my panic and imagination were very bad that night; it was this that made me realise that the house was only some 800yds flying time from the Longbridge works which was building aeroplanes.

Travelling was a problem. I had to walk about 1.5 miles to catch a tramcar to work. There was a works bus to Longbridge but in those days there was a union rule that only workers were allowed to use it and I was not a worker. This caused problems especially in the winter. It really snowed in those days.

My wife took rations and catering in her stride. She was a trained nurse and while she did some nursing at a local hospital (2 miles) it soon became obvious that, although we had got a live in so called nanny she was costing us so much in broken pots and the travelling was very difficult so we decided that she would remain at home. Another baby arrived in 1941.

Things were getting difficult nationally and I was called up for a medical but the powers that be decided that they could win the war without me and sent me home to my reserved occupation plus A.R.P.plus Red Cross and fire watching at the hospital. I suppose the fire watching was probably the most exciting thing of my war. I do remember the blitz on Coventry one way or another we had a busy time that night.

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