大象传媒

The 'WHO' was pretty simple. It was a Job obviously for the Home Secretary. He was in charge of the Home Department, he was in charge of law and order etc., so he was designated as the Minister dealing with the precautions that were needed.

Then 'HOW' was he going to do it?

Well he had the Home Office staff. It wasn't very large and was all situated in London, which wouldn't be very helpful because we were going to make preparations all over the country. So then some bright Herbert said "Well what about the local authorities - why can't they do it?" "Brilliant" they said, "brilliant, excellent". So the Job was given to the Local Authorities THAT WAS THE HOW

I suppose there were about nearly 300 Authorities of one sort or another. There were the county counciis, the county borough councils of the largest towns, the boroughs, the urban districts and the rural districts. Obviously an unwieldy thing to co-ordinate and so it was decided to divide the Local Authorities into two groups:

On the one side would be the large towns -the county boroughs (and West Bromwich was a county borough) and on the other side would be the boroughs, the urbans, the rurals and so on. They were going to be put under the care of the County Councils. So you would have the County Boroughs as Air Raid Precaution Authorities and the County Councils. Interestingly enough, there were 83 County Boroughs then and 38 County Councils -just the reverse.

For the purposes of coordination the country was divided into nine regions. We were in region 9 which was Worcestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire. A very important part of the country. Very heavily populated. Very heavily industrialized. Very much involved with the preparations for war. Each region had a Regional Commissioner appointed by the Home Secretary. The Regional Commissioner for our area was Lord Dudley. I met him several times during the war. He was a great man and he was there to see that we did what we had been told to do. He had to act as liaison between his Authorities and the Government.

In the event that government should become difficult from London due to enemy action, Regional Commissioners would take on responsibility to act for the Government. Happily such circumstances did not arise. It is interesting really, when you think about giving the Local Authorities the job. Long after the war I went to a Local Government Conference and a speaker there made a comment which I always thought was something and it was to this effect:

鈥淟ocal Government has always been adept at adapting. Reacting and responding to the changing needs of society.鈥� And that statement was never more true than in 1939 to 19 did adapt, we did change and we produce the goods. I think we did at any rate.

Well I have talked about THE WHO and THE HOW now we have got to talk about the 'WHAT'.

WHAT was it we were going to be required to do?

That was left to the Home Secretary to make Regulations about and he was very busily making them. I'll just run through the sort of things we were engaged in:

First of all there was the provision of shelters.

Shelters for every man, woman and child. We had 72,000 inhabitants in West Bromwich and It was an enormous job to plan, build and provide all these shelters. Some of course were the' Anderson' shelters, which comprised of pieces of corrugated iron which bolted together to form a sort of Nissan Hut. People had to dig a hole in the back garden, put the shelter in it and then pile the earth on top and that would provide a shelter. Many of the people couldn't have them in West Bromwich because as soon as they started to dig a hole they came to water and it was no use sitting in a shelter with your feet in the water. So although a number of 'Anderson' shelters were used, we had to build what were called communal shelters, grouping together three or four houses, providing a shelter and saying "that's your shelter, that is where you go". Then there were the public shelters. People going backwards and forwards to work caught in an air raid -where do they go -we had to provide shelter. Women going shopping in the town -we had got to provide shelter. Children going to and from school - it was no use sending children back home after the sirens had sounded so every school had to have a shelter. The public shelters were scattered around, many of them built on the footpaths. This was a colossal task. It was one for the Borough Surveyor to be involved with and building labour was short.

Builders were needed to build factories. We had an awful job to get this work done. It did not happen to be done over a period of two or three years. The Government said, "We want the shelters built yesterday"!

Then of course it was known that if the enemy were dropping bombs, premises would be blown up and people could be trapped down under the wreckage if they happened to be in the house. So we were required to recruit and train men as rescue teams, "rescue squads". It was aiso of course quite obvious to people that when a bomb dropped causing damage people were going to be killed. People were going to be injured. Some of them very seriously, some of them not so seriously. For those that were killed all that could be done was in due course to give them a 'decent burial but those who were alive and had been got out by the rescue people, would need treatment. Some would have to go to hospital. So, we were required to recruit and train men and women for first aid purposes. They would go out when instructed to do so, they would patch-up people who were capable of being patched-up and send them to a safe place for the night. Those that were very badly injured would have to go to hospital and they would have to go in an ambulance. West Bromwich had I think, .3 ambulances when the war broke out- peacetime ambulances". They were housed at the Oak Lane bus garage and Mr. Whitcomb Smith the manager was also the Ambulance Officer.

Of course he wanted more ambulances. He couldn't buy them because they would all be going into the services. The navy, army, and airforce were taking all the new ambulances that were being made, so he bought a number of second-hand vans, stripped them out and made them capable of carrying stretchers. He took one of our old single-decker buses out of service and he stripped that out and made it capable of carrying stretchers. Then having got the ambulances, we had got to get drivers and attendants and they had to be trained. All that work had to be going on.

Then we needed the Wardens service, 'the people's friends' as they were called. We recruited and trained men and women who would be available to help the public, who would do their duties in the area where they lived. They would know the people In the area, they would know if the people at No.10 had gone to live in the country for the war. No use digging under No.10 if a bomb dropped - there would be nobody there. 50 the Wardens had to know their people and had to assist. They were there to make sure that people went to shelter and helped in many ways. Then we had to have some means whereby we could control all these services. It was no use when a bomb dropped all rushing out to see what they could do, so we had to set up our own War Room and that was housed underneath the Town Hall West Bromwich High Street down in the basement there. We had a staff of about 20 to 24 people on duty in the War Room. The council had been told that they had to appoint their own boss, their own Controller, someone who would be in charge of air raid precautions. He was George Francis Darlow, the Town Clerk and I was to be one of his deputy controllers as time went on. Down in the large basement of the Town Hall, which had to be strengthened up of course, we had two complete telephone exchanges that were manned day and night from the time the war broke out until the end of the war. They were manned without stop, day and night, all the time by two skilled operators.

Whiist all this was going on we had been told that we had to provide some refuges where people could be sent if they were homeless. We had a special team of volunteers to set up rest centres in places like church halis and school halls where people who were bombed out could be sent for perhaps a day or two until they could find somewhere to live. That is another thing that had to be done. You must not forget that we were not able to pay people to do all this work, they weren't available. People were required in industry, people were being called up for the services. So the job had to be done by volunteers and of course we had to keep the town running as well. You couldn't Just leave things. The dead had to be buried, the dustbins had to be emptied but you can just imagine the sort of activity that had to go on. The air raid side of it was all new to us. We were all on a learning curve because we hadn't done anything like that before.

1939 saw us at war but by the time we got to that stage I reckon we had about 800 Wardens actually in the course of training and I suppose we probably had 700 other personnel of one sort or another, Rescue, First Aid, Ambulance, Control Room etc. and with the Wardens that made about 1500 people. The point I want to make is that 90% of those I would think were volunteers as there were very few paid personnel in Civil Defence in West Bromwich. We did have a few, like the switchboard operators that I mentioned. We had six giris working round the clock in three shifts and they were paid. We had another gentleman who came and gave us two mornings a week keeping some records for us and that was our quota in the War Room. All the other people in the Centre were volunteers. There were a few rescue men that were paid. I don't think there were any First Alders or ambulance people who were paid. I don't know whether there were any paid Wardens, there may have been one or two, but there wouldn't have been many. All the volunteers were able to have in return, was the knowledge that they were there to serve their fellow men and women. They may have had a cup of tea out of it. They got a uniform later on but we didn't have uniforms for quite a long time.

The Chain of Command was from the War Room. We had to have some means of controlling all these people and so, when bombs were dropped, information would be sent to the War Room by phone usually by the Wardens or perhaps by the police or the fire people. That message would be taken down by our telephonists who were part of the volunteers and separate from the switchboard operators. The message was then taken to the 'inner sanctum' where the Chief Officers would rapidly decide what needed to be done. They would issue an instruction which would be brought back to the telephonist and it would be phoned down to the various depots. "Send a rescue team". "Send a first aid team". "Send an ambulance" etc. Every night, when there wasn't a raid on, there was a practice. It started at 8 o'clock and all the services were involved. It was a paper exercise. Wardens started to phone In their damage reports (they made them up and were very, very Ingenious).

Messages were brought In, action determined and Instructions sent out. Nobody moved, but It was an exercise done every night, weekends just the same. The War Room was very busy every night at 8 o'clock unless we got a raid. The thing was so finely tuned, that when it really happened it went like clockwork. I know the Town Clerk was highly commended by the Regional Commissioner for the work that he was doing and the way that he was doing it because we used to practice with Birmingham and with the Regional Commissioner's staff.

The Air Raid Precautions Act provided that we should appoint a small Emergency Committee to run things during the war. It was a wonderful committee comprising:

The Chairman Alderman John Lees (Major Lees)

Chairman of the finance Committee Alderman Bertram Adams

Chairman of the Watch Committee Alderman Edward Woodward

Alderman J.J. Grant, Councilor David Collins. They constituted the Civil Defence Emergency Committee with delegated powers to implement the requirements of the 1937 Act and the Regulations made by the Home Secretary. Delegation enabled the Committee to act in these matters without prior deference to the council. Reports of action taken were submitted, but not in any great detail for reasons of National Security. The Civil Defence Committee did not have responsibility for the normal Council Services which were dealt with through the respective Council Committees.

They spent the money and got on with the job. The shelter programme was paid for entirely by the taxpayers. All we had to do was get' permission to build the shelters then send in the bill for payment. Other Civil Defence expenditure was 75% grant earning for things we could do or need not do. for example, we could issue uniforms and we did later on, but the government paid 75% of the cost of those and the ratepayers had to pay the rest. That was how it was done. I have no idea of the total amount of money that was spent but it must have run into hundreds of thousands.

The Ministry of Food introduced rationing and we had to have a department to look after that. Our Treasurer was made Food Officer and he had a staff of people issuing ration books and permits to buy food and all sorts of things. That was another thing that was going on.

West Bromwich had bombs dropped very soon after the war started on September 3rd 1939 and I had confirmation of that only recently from the Daily Mail. They have been producing some reprints of old newspapers and they produced a bit of one the other week for Friday September 4th 1939 and I was interested to read "Air raid warnings were sounded in the early hours of this morning over a wide area embracing London and parts of the Midland and North Eastern Counties". It was then I think we had three bombs dropped in Great Barr on open land. They weren't very big bombs as it turned out. I went to see what had happened the next day.

They had made some big holes but hadn't done much damage thank goodness. We think that the bomb aimer was after either the railway running up the valley or the canal which ran alongside it or the liamstead Colliery. Either one of those would have been a prime target but fortunately they missed them all.

Then of course, our Expeditionary Force got into trouble in France. We just couldn't stop this man and we had to bring our chaps back from Dunkirk. A wonderful thing, you will have all seen and know about it - but it was truly wonderful. A lot of these chaps were badly wounded and we had a train load of them up to West Bromwich. We were advised that we were going to have these people up and would we look after them. That didn't affect me in any way but it affected our Medical Officer and these poor chaps were received, the ambulances were got there (the bus ambulance could take about 20 stretchers, it was just the job, couldn't have been better) and these chaps were taken to hospital and dealt with.

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