´óÏó´«Ã½

HILDA EDGAR IN THE WAR

I moved from Birmingham to Kidderminster when I was about 2 years old and I have been here ever since. There were eight of us in the family. My Father used to walk from Birmingham to Kidderminster (about 20 miles) to try and get a job, and he finally got a job on the buses and he worked mainly at Hartlebury.

We had a good childhood. My Parents were strict but we never went short of anything, if one of us hadn’t got any shoes they borrowed another’s. We couldn’t have an egg each. Two of us had to share one. Considering it was a large family, we had a good life and a loving family.

I left school before I was 14 years old. Apart from my service years, I have always worked in the carpet factory. I was a winder, which is the worst job in the factory you can have. I also used to do a bit of washing up at night at the Bell Hotel in Coventry Street.

Whilst I was there I saw the soldiers coming and going, and one of the Sergeant Majors came in from the recruiting office and I was asking him about it. He told me to write in and they would sort something out for me. I couldn’t have a letter come to my home because my Mother would not have let me join up, so I had it sent to the Hotel were I worked, and I was accepted. I never told my Mother I was going in the forces until the morning that I’d got to go to Worcester to get the medical examination. When she woke me up to go to work and I said ‘sorry Mum, but I’m going in the forces, I’m going to the railway station’. she was really upset and I hesitated, but decided in the end that I would go to Worcester and I was accepted.

I had a letter come which said I had to report to Ashchurch just outside Tewkesbury, and that was a training base but I know we had to go to Durham Castle and when we got there we had to run up all the stone steps, and when we reached the top we had to do a test on a machine to see if your nerve was strong enough for going into the forces, and I passed.

I was posted to Thorpe Bay near Southend on Sea on the ack ack (anit aircraft) I was on a Sperry Predictor, which was a machine like a large ‘fridge with dials on it. I was on the one to get the plane in the search lights. The number two girl would be on the height, another on the bearing, and so on and we passed that information on to the guns which were about 50 — 100 yards away. The officer would be there to get the information from the ‘Predictor’ to put into the guns. We were trying to find out how high it was, which way it was flying and how fast it was flying. I had to follow the aircraft round with the search light and once the bearings had been read, I was the one who had to shout to the guns to ‘fire’.

We hit a J.O 88 on its way with bombs, and we got commended from War Office for that. All the Ack Ack did a good job, in fact everyone in the forces did a good job.

I couldn’t quite see if the plane following the one we first hit was a German or British one, but I know we fired another shell and it tipped the tail, but we had a ticking off from War Office for tipping it, so I really don’t know what happened to it.

I went to London with my husband on weekend leave to my Mother in Law, the air raid siren went one night and she said we would have to go in the shelter, but I wasn’t used to going inside I was used to standing outside, but at the end of the road was a massive cinema and when we came out of the shelter the next day it wasn’t there. They did have a lot of bombs in London. The spirit of the people though was marvellous.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.