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GROWING UP IN WARTIME

At the outbreak of war on Sunday 3rd September 1939, I was 11 years old, and living in Sparkhill, Birmingham. My school, Yardley Grammar School had been evacuated two days previously to Lydney, 18 miles from Gloucester. I had been unable to travel with them as I suffering with a broken arm. However a fortnight later I was considered fit to travel, along with another boy called Harry Laight, who had also been unable to travel with the main part.

We were met at Lydney by Mrs. Carson who was the chief billeting officer for the evacuated children. She and her committee had had the task of finding homes for the entire Yardley School. As we were the last two to arrive, she decided to take us herself.

The Carsons were Canadians. Dr Carson was the senior local Doctor. They had a beautiful house called ‘Westfield’ standing in its own grounds, with a tennis court and swimming pool in the rear gardens. The house was situated right opposite Lydney Grammar School. The Carsons had a cook, maid and gardener. Their son and eldest daughter were away at Private Schools — Clifton College and Cheltenham College respectively, and just the youngest daughter was at home. We really had landed in the pick of the evacuees homes!

Yardley shared the school with Lydney Grammar School. Lydney had the mornings from 8.30 to 12.30, and Yardley the afternoons from 1.30 to 5.30. (They seemed rather long as the days got shorter). Outside school hours we had the use of Assembly Rooms nearby.

In the mornings there was table tennis and other games and also quiet rooms for homework. Socials were arranged for both seniors and juniors on a fortnightly basis. There were also visits to the local cinema, with the teachers armed with torches in the blackout. Visits were made to local beauty spots, parties of children helped with potato picking and later a school garden was opened for ‘Dig for Victory’.

January 1940 was very snowy, and we had great fun tobogganing down the local Primrose Hill. About this time with the war still in its quiet ‘phoney’ stage, and it was decided to re-open the school in Yardley, with parents having the choice of leaving pupils in Lydney or bringing them back to Birmingham. My parents decided to bring me back, so ending my time as an evacuee.

It was rather strange back in Yardley School with the school virtually split in two between Lydney and Birmingham. With so many teachers still away, the school day was shorter and classes rather irregular. It was to be later in the war before Yardley fully functioned again. The few remaining pupils at Lydney became pupils of Lydney Grammar School.

It was a glorious summer in 1940, and after Dunkirk, the ‘Battle of Britain’ seemed to lift everyone’s spirits and there was a real feeling of togetherness. However, later in September, the blitz on Birmingham began. In Sparkhill we were particularly vulnerable, as the B.S.A. factory making munitions was only a mile away. Many evenings the sirens would go, with the raid lasting for several hours.

We had an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden, and we would go there with a flask of tea and a paraffin lamp as our only illumination. The whistle of the bombs is a sound you never forget. Half a mile away our local cinema, the ‘Carlton’ was hit and several people were killed, including a lad I knew, a few years older than me. However being boys, we would go round the streets after a raid collecting shrapnel from anti aircraft gun shells, fins off incendiary bombs and even silk from parachute land mines.

In late November my Mother could stand the raids no longer, and we moved to a small rented house in Halesowen, 10 miles away. A week or so after we moved, a family house a few doors away from where we had lived in Sparkhill was hit, and the Mother and her three children were killed.

Due to our move, I was transferred to Halesowen Grammar School. My third grammar school in a year. It was rather daunting going on my own to a strange school where I knew no one, and I had a feeling of being thrown in at the deep end. However, the young are pretty adaptable, things settled down and the war years I spent at the Halesowen Grammar gave me many happy memories.

Around the age of 14 year, several of us joined the Halesowen Air Training Corps (A.T.C.). We had classes on morse code, navigation, aircraft recognition etc. We had a weeks camp at Pershore aerodrome where I had a fifteen minute flight in a Wellington bomber — a great thrill. We also in the A.T.C,. had flights in small aircraft, such as Curspeed Oxfords and De Havilland Rapides at Cosford and Bobbington aerodromes.

A particular memory of my A.T.C.days concerns a lad some three years older than me, named Derek Cox. Derek worked as milkman, and he and I often walked homewards together, after an evening at the A.T.C. When he was about 171/2 years old Derek volunteered for the R.A.F. and about three months later I met him in Stourbridge. He was now a Sergeant Air Gunner. Sadly in 1944 Derek was shot down and killed. His name is on the War Memorial in Halesowen churchyard — a lovely lad I shall always remember.

I left school at just 16 years old, and joined Joseph Lucas. At that time they were still making munitions. The last year of the war I was an apprentice draughtsman, going one day a week to Halesowen Technical College to study Mechanical Engineering.

This then was how I spent the war years — an unforgettable period in one’s life. It’s still hard to believe seeing Birmingham immediately after a raid. Things like the ‘Mermaid’ pub on the corner of Stratford and Warwick Road, with some of its front sliced away and a snooker table in full view!

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by June Woodhouse of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of Ronald Bagshaw and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions

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