大象传媒

I was one of those thousands of "children of the war" living in Birmingham during World War II. My family was fortunate to survive the air raids of 1940 and 1941, the most severe (I learned recently) on any British city except for the London Blitz and about equal to the attacks on the Merseyside region. Hitler's ill-judged attack on the Soviet Union after June 1941 drew the Luftwaffe air force to the Eastern Front, reducing heavy attacks on Birmingham. It was bombed for the last time in 1943.
I recognize the casualties in Britain were vastly lower than those upon German civilians and I believe the destruction of the German military and industrial machine, while essential, cannot excuse the indiscriminate killing of civilians -- no matter what kind of war, then or now. But as an eight- or nine-year-old at the end of the "last, good war" we kids and definitely the adults, didn't have many kind thoughts for the German people and their Nazi overlords.
I lived on Grindleford Road, Beeches Estate, Great Barr, Birmingham, in the northern part of the city, and rather too close for comfort to the Castle Bromwich Aerodrome factory. This is where we knew, and the bomber crews knew, the Spitfire fighters were being assembled in large numbers. Also in the city were a Lancaster (four-engined) bomber factory, and dozens of producers of munitions and other "war effort" material.
Only minutes away by Heinkel or Dornier bomber, our area was thus liberally sprinkled with incendiaries (one of which I found in a stream and took away as a "dud" prize until relieved of it by a passing constable!) in the general effort to bomb the factories. I have learned the Castle Bromwich factory escaped major damage though one raid did kill several workers there. All told, more than 2,200 Brummies were killed by enemy action, and a large number must have been children.
That makes it even more curious why we children of those far-off days got along so well with "the Germans at the end of the garden," as I think of them to this day. The mortal danger was apparent. Given the enmity of the Allies and Axis, it is intriguing to recall the friendly relations between us "kids" and the German prisoners-of-war at a camp in a vacant field behind Grindleford Road. They were (and I would like to hear if my memory is serving me correctly from other witnesses) for the most part Luftwaffe pilots and other aircrew non-commissioned officers shot down over southern England.
I can't place in my mind if it was a permanent POW camp (there was a wire fence and one or two armed guards) or more likely a temporary work camp. The prisoners graded roads for what was to become a prefab(ricated) housing estate. (Today the M6 motorway runs down the centre of that former field, from which no trace remains of a small stream, our bicycle "dirt track" and the informal football pitch.)
I remember talking to the prisoners, who were probably in their late teens and hastily drafted into the Luftwaffe as German losses soared. A handful spoke English -- they were all so-called "white patch" prisoners with no professed love for Naziism, certainly not the Gestapo types of the movies -- and I imagine they were relieved to be out of the war and out of danger. They must have been worried about and missing their families back home. One vivid memory is of a pilot of a Messerschmidt 109 fighter who told us entralled lads (and possibly one girl) he had been given only six weeks' flying training before being sent across the Channel on his first sortie and then shot down by an RAF Spitfire pilot. His war must have lasted all of 10 minutes! However, the young German had other skills. He made us model sailing ships in bottles, if we provided two items: the bottle and a pack of cigarettes. My father Sid (a factory toolmaker deemed an essential war worker and thus ineligible for military call-up) smoked Players, my mother Gilly had a supply of pre-war bottles, so .... the rest is family history. Essentially such barter items were pinched in the interests of juvenile Anglo-German relations. (Conversely, on the Anglo-American GI trading front in Birmingham in early 1944, it was a racier barter system of: "Got any gum, chum?" with the not-quite-kidding response: "Got a sister, mister?")
That little ship-in-a-bottle has long gone, though I am assured by the 大象传媒 Antiques Road Show such wartime items are collectibles worth a bit more than a pack of smokes.
Our parents, as far as I know, didn't object to this fraternization with the "enemy," and considering what the Luftwaffe had intended to do to them they were surprisingly forgiving. Perhaps it is human nature to see a surrendered (and harmless) enemy in a better light than when an anonymous and mostly invisible aircraft high above is dropping destruction, pain and death on your home.
Although many of us are still wary of that generation of Germans (and Japanese), unfair as it may be six decades later, ours was a sort of friendship of individuals, one group not an awful lot older than the other. Some protocol was necessary, however: the standard question of which was the better plane, the Spitfire or the Messerschmidt always brought a similar answer: Oh, ja, der Spitfeur. Then they would laugh and we would laugh and run home to report on the current war situation to our parents. Those same moms and dads who were wondering where that rationed packet of cigarettes had gone!
Odd to think that some of those 19-year-olds who survived to return to Germany are now 79 and older. I hope they remember -- as do we survivors of that exciting and harrowing era -- that smoking and wars are bad for you.

David Trenbirth, Halifax NS, Canada. November, 2005.

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