大象传媒

When war broke out in 1939, I was eight years old.
We lived in Winston Green B,ham my parents had a shop in Heathfield Rd. When the bombing started we had a metal shelter down in the cellar sometimes, I would go to bed and wake up in the shelter, sometimes 1 would sneak upstairs from the cellar, and stand on the door step behind my father and a couple of other men., they were in all in the A.R.PS waiting to be called out my father had a car, and had to take them were they were needed. I would stand watching the glow in the sky from fires all around, I remember the night that Coventry was bombed the sky was bright red.

I have three brothers two older, one younger, my eldest was a messenger boy on a bike in the Blitz, until being called up at 18 years he was in R.E.M.E.
My younger brother and me were evacuated to South Wales, at a place called Aberbargoed there was a large coal mine we did not like it at all, the head of the family was a miner, and when he came home he had a bath in front of the fire, and we were expected to have a bath after him and the others, one boy one girl (no way) the water was very dirty.

After a few months we had had enough and decided to walk home after a couple of miles the police picked us up and took us back, a few weeks later my father came and took us back home.

Early in 1944 my parents bought some land and built a bungalow on it at Bournheath about three miles from Bromsgrove then later bought a groceries shop and 2 garages selling newspapers and other things. We had a ten-acre field we build a long greenhouse and grew all sorts of veg. And that was it until the end of the war.

The war started when I was seven years old, my dad worked on the railway and was exempt from the army, and he was an air raid warden and used to make sure that the blackout was all right. We had an Anderson shelter in the garden and when there was an air raid mom used to get us out of bed and we used to go in the shelter, my sister was a baby, I can remember my mother covering us up when the bombs came. We had a bomb crater in the field a hundred yards from the shelter and the children used to play in it as it filled with water. We used to collect shrapnel. There was an unexploded bomb in the street it was cordoned off but a woman wanted to go to her house, a policeman on duty made her come a way but the bomb went off and the policeman was killed. Blown to bits.

Dad used to bring home army rations from the Americans, little squares of tea, sugar, all sorts; it used to help with the rations. We lived in B/ham
Sheldon not far from Coventry, which was very heavily bombed, I was evacuated to Pipewood camp boarding school
But dad sent me money for my fare home for Xmas and they said that they
hadn't received the money so dad brought me home. I enjoyed my time there I was there for about twelve months.
My local school was bombed so I had to travel on a bus. We moved to Bromsgrove after the war dad found a car that had been lying in a garden did it up we drove to Bromsgrove he hadn't passed a test as you didn't have to in those days

(This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Wyre Forest Volunteer Bureau on behalf of Pamela White and has been added to this site with her permission. Mrs White fully understands the site's terms and conditions.)

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