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.

Part One

I was fire woman in the fire service C division headquarters, Cambridge Street in Birmingham which was area 24 from 1939 to 1945. I was also the divisional instructress Squad Drill and PE. In 1938 I joined the ARP which was Air Raid Precautions and it was being formed to protect the home front so if war was declared, and we had bombs or fires or anything over here it was the civilian population helping out with the forces. It was purely a voluntary organisation and I and many of my friends joined this. Later on in the year which was May 1939, I heard that the fire service were hoping to recruit people. They needed civilians to help out in the offices and back up the firemen when they went to fires, they wanted civilians for admin jobs, office jobs, cooking, switchboards, transport and help with training . So I rang up to see if I was qualified enough to help and the age limit was 18 but because they were in such need of people they said if I filled in the form and sent it in, by the time war was declared I鈥檇 be 18 and eligible to join. So I filled the form in sent it in and when war was declared on the 3rd of September, I was told on the radio to mobilise and to go to the nearest station or posts or whatever they鈥檇 volunteered for.

Some weeks I continued to do my office job during the day and was going to the fire service in the evening and working until late. They had a lot of civilians who used their cars they were called dispatch riders although they weren鈥檛 on motorcycles they had their cars and they took messages from here to there. They took people who were working late on night duty, home in case the buses had stopped they picked them up if it was difficult for people to get into the fire stations. These people with cars generally made themselves helpful taking messages from fire station to fire station. The fire stations were the regular fire stations, the big fire stations that we have today, and then each division in the city was made up into several divisions and each division had about 8 auxiliary stations which were made up in houses and there they had vehicles which could tow the pumps which were put onto the back like trailer pumps, they had people standing by with cars and they had auxiliary firemen who weren鈥檛 regular brigade men but they鈥檇 been trained, they鈥檇 gone through training and they were qualified to go out with the firemen and put out fires, this took quite a few months to organise but in the end there were 11 stations on our division including three which were main fire brigades where they kept the big Escapes and later the Turntable ladders which are now the Simon Snorkles which you see going up to the roofs. We didn鈥檛 have a uniform to start with so we wore slacks because as I was working during the daytime I used to come home and have a quick meal and then go into Cambridge Street in town and take over the switchboard for the night shift. Well this was a bit strenuous so after a few weeks of doing this I was asked if I鈥檇 like to become a full time fire woman and not have my job during the day. This entailed earning 拢3 pounds a week for the whole time. This meant I went in every day, there were three shifts from 7am-3pm, 3pm-11pm, and from 11pm-7am the next morning. So that way the switchboard was covered. I was the first firewoman to be recruited for C division and after that there were quite a few girls there were about 12 of us altogether to cover the switchboard.

The switchboard was on the ground floor of a very old building in Cambridge Street, it belonged to the ARP people and they had got all their equipment and pumps in there, so we took over the first floor and the top floor and down in the cellar they had made a control room with maps on the wall so that we knew just where every fire engine or auxillary pump was by looking on the board. The switchboard they couldn鈥檛 unfortunately take down into the control room and so outside our window we had stacks and stacks of sandbags piled up and they had built around our switchboard an Anderson shelter that was a metal structure it was about 6 feet wide by about 8 feet long. And they just stood it over the top of the switchboard and clamped it to the floor and the firemen used to come in and put little notices on like 鈥淧lease don鈥檛 feed the rabbits鈥�, because it looked just like a rabbit hutch but anyhow we were assured that if a bomb did strike a building it would protect us.

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