大象传媒

Erdington Memories
By A J Emery

1940-41 Aged 11-12
Heavy rain on Birmingham last night. Police called at our house to inform us that my Grandma & Grandad had been bombed out in Aston Lichfield Rd. My mother and I ran all the way from Erdington Court Lane to Aston down Slade Road past the reservoir where the road was block with UXB鈥檚. A policeman tried to stop us going past but my mother said my mom and dad are up there and we ducked under the barrier and carried on . My Grandma & Grandad鈥檚 house was at the back of some shops and a bomb had landed in front of their house and split it in half. Some of the firemen were gassed and their faces had gone green coloured. Grandma & Grandad were not injured but Grandma was blown out of bed- she was 17 st- we could not find out where they were at first. They had been taken to temporary accommodation. It took us all day to find out where. At first we thought they had been killed. My mother was crying all the time. She was never the same after that.

1943 Aged 14
About 1pm one very foggy day I came home for lunch from the butchers shop where I worked. (The sirens had not sounded) so I sat eating my sandwiches, when all at once I heard a plane鈥檚 engine very loud. I rushed out into the back garden a German plane had just dived below cloud level. You could see the crosses and swastikas on it and its machine guns sticking out. I am sure one of the crew was staring at me. He must have been lost and came down to get his bearings. (I often wondered if they got home) They could have machine-gunned mew and the man next door who also ran out. He was a night worker at Fort Dunlop. You should have heard his language. Anyway they didn鈥檛. It was all a bit of fun to me at my age. How wrong I was.

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