大象传媒

In September of 1939 when was declared in Great Britain, I was 8 years old, and lived in a suburb of Birmingham called Hall Green. My mother was a house wife, and my father was a commercial traveller.
My father had been a soldier in World War 1, but now to old join the services. Never the less he joined the home guard which was a part time defence force, formed to defend Britain from invasion.
In 1940 when the German air force a started bombing campaign against Britain, Birmingham was a prime target. This was because many important things were being made. Such as spitfire aircraft at Castle Bromwich, guns at B.S.A works at Small Heath military vehicles at Austin works at Longbridge, which many other essential items.
So Birmingham had many air raids, and my family spent many nights in our neighbours Anderson shelter made of strong corrugated sheets of steel.
At night when the air raids started I was usually asleep, and my father would carry me down to the air raid shelter wrapped in a blanket.
Later in 1940-1941 when the air raids got more frequent my parents agreed I should be evacuated. So I was then with many of my school friends to a small village in Leicestershire called Thringstone. Here I was placed with a kindly middle-aged couple, who lived in a small terraced house. I could not get used to living there as there was no inside toilet in the house, and I had to go to the outside toilet at the bottom of the back garden. After about 18 months at Thringstone, I was very home sick and asked my parents if I could come home. They agreed and I returned to Birmingham in 1942. The air raids were still happening, and one night we saw a huge red glow in the sky to our south east. Later we were told it was a very big German air raid on Coventry. This raid destroyed Coventry cathedral and most of the city centre.
At this time the army built a camp on the golf course opposite our home. At this camp was installed anti-aircraft guns and searchlights. So when the bombers came over on a raid the Ack-Ack started firing and the searchlights would try to pick out enemy planes. When we were in the air raid shelter when the bombers where over head, the Ack-Ack guns started firing, and you could hear the sound of falling shrapnel from the shells exploding falling onto the roofs of the houses in outer street. All the children, me included, liked to collect the shrapnel as a souvenir, and we looked for it everyday after an air raid. Also at this time Birmingham had many double Decker buses which were kept in garages situated in many districts of the city. However the bombers began to target the bus garages, and destroyed many buses with incendiary bombs. To combat these losses, the city gathered some dispersed many buses to the outer suburbs of the city. So every evening we heard about a hundred buses parked in our road 8 pm until 6 pm. The next morning we could hear the buses starting up. The tall trees on the golf course gave good camouflage to the buses.

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