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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Mary Lovick and Harry from Bodsham Primary School and has been added to the website on behalf of Peggy Hewes with her permission and they fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

MY WAR IN NORTH BIRMINGHAM

I was seven when the war started and was living with my Mother, Grandmother, Aunt and two uncles in the suburbs of Birmingham, which as you know is a big city in the Midlands with lots of factories — many of them in those days making war weapons. The two uncles very quickly joined up and went into the forces, and my Mother and Aunt were doing war work. I was evacuated to my relations in Nottinghamshire, which was thought to be safer, but I was very homesick so my mother took me back to face the dangers in Birmingham with her.

Everything was quiet and normal for a while but then in the second year of the war the bombing started and every night the sirens would start wailing as soon as the darkness came. We all, with some neighbours as well, slept in the Anderson shelter in the garden. I was the only child so I had a small bed organised for me, but the grown ups sat in deck chairs or whatever would fit in. I thought it was all rather fun, my grandmother always produced hot cocoa and rock cakes or something like that, though how she managed it when it rations were so tight I don’t know. It was very frightening though when bombs fell near, and the noise at times was deafening with the sound of bombs and anti-aircraft guns. After the wooden door of the shelter would get caught by the blast and hurled down the garden. We were lucky no bombs fell on our house, although many of the neighbouring houses were hit, but most of our windows were broken by the blast, and the plaster fell from the ceilings because the house was shaking so much. Later in the war when there was less bombing in the area we stopped sleeping in the shelter, but moved all of the beds downstairs and turned the dining room into a sort of dormitory where we all slept, the cat and dog cuddled up to us too!

If the raids had been particularly bad we were allowed to go to school late. Quite a bonus! Of course we always had to carry our gas masks wherever we went.

Because there was no television we only saw the dreadful things that were happening to our forces and the results of the bombing if we went to the Cinema and saw the Newsreels, but everything had to stop at 6pm when everyone sat glued to the News on the wireless.

It was a difficult time, but people didn’t complain and everyone stayed cheerful and helped their friends and neighbours, so in an odd sort of way they were good times too. Paper was in short supply, We had to write in pencil and then rewrote in pen. As children we learnt a lot about hardship, and if you sometimes wonder why your grandparents don’t like wasting things — food, clothes, household things — remember it’s because they learnt to be frugal in those years!

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