大象传媒

I was born in 1935 and lived in Grasmere Road Handsworth Birmingham. I attended Benson Rd Infant and Junior School which was in Winson Green approx half a mile away. We had to take our gas masks everywhere with us and there were frequent air-raid and gas mask drills when we had to huddle down under our desks as there were no air-raid shelters
Although I cannot remember anything about my actual schooling at infants school or even the teachers names, I can remember that on at least 2 occasions we were taken into the playground to watch Alex Henshaw, the Spitfire test pilot, a name I have never forgotten, doing aerobatics over the centre of Birmingham to raise money for"Spitfire Day". Money donated by the public, including collections in schools etc., went towards Spitfire production at Castle Bromwich.
My parents took me on a couple of occasions later in the war, to Castle Bromwich, where we saw Spitfires either towed by tractor, or pushed by a squad of people, from the production line in a factory, across the Chester Road onto Castle Bromwich Airfield. This is now Castle Vale housing estate. Once on the airfield the engine was started and run up, while other checks were carried out. Air tests quickly followed, before delivery pilots flew them to RAF stations.
In common with most families we had a corrugated iron Anderson shelter half buried in the garden with the top covered in soil, strictly to the instructions of the government department that supplied the shelter in kit form. My father's parents lived next door to us so the two shelters were dug out and erected as a joint operation. Our shelter was made as comfortable as possible for our almost nightly visits, with a bed for my older sister and myself and a bench for our parents, although in the early days Dad was out on firewatch if he was not at work. An oil lamp and candles provided light, which had to be shielded if the entrance blackout curtain was raised.
One night, a factory in the next road, where my sister worked, was set on fire by bombing, and although there were two rows of houses and a couple of hundred yards between us and the fire, the heat was such that we thought we were going to roast in the metal shelter!
We soon learned to recognise the continuous growl of the British aero engines, compared with the throb of the German ones. Shouts of 'it's all right it's one of ours' or 'take cover it's one of theirs' could frequently be heard from firewatchers, ARP (air raid precautions) wardens etc.
Being home from school for luch one day, I heard the unmistakeable throb of a German aircraft and ran into the garden, in time to see an aircraft flying high and not quite over us, being followed by bursting anti-aircraft shells which gave dull thuds. I called out mother and our neighbours, and we watched until the plane was out of range of the guns, then out of sight, before the air-raid siren sounded!
My father,who had been in the Army in the last days of the First World War, was a bus driver for Birmingham City Transport when the second war started. Initially he joined the Home Guard at Hockley bus garage where he worked. Their gate guard hut was a large bell like steel structure, which was supposed to give maximum protection against blast and falling shrapnel, a more frequent hazard than bombs!
After air-raids on some of the Birmingham garages, a system of dispersing buses at night round the city boundaries was implemented. Dad became one of a two man team responsible for looking after Hockley buses at Island Road Handsworth near the border with West Bromwich. Apart from security and fire watching, they had to run the engines at intervals to stop them freezing in winter, they must have been popular with neighbours! After a while the radiators were fitted with heaters, so each bus had to be connected to a specially installed series of power points.
Everyone was called upon to "do their bit" so mother went to work at CW Cheney in Factory Road Handsworth, they made case locks and handles, but in the war this was changed to ammunition clips and magazines for Lee Enfield rifles and Bren guns. My sister joined the Land Army as soon as she was old enough. She ultimately met, and married, a soldier who lived near where she was posted. He had been captured very early in the war, and was a prisoner throughout doing the infamous "Death March" from the East in the closing stages of the war.

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