大象传媒

I was twelve when war was declared. I remember listening to the radio announcement, I ran into the road expecting the soldiers to come marching down the street. Mother was very worried about the war, she had grown up with the next door neighbour鈥檚 seven sons. They all went to the First World War, but sonly one came back and he had shell shock. These deaths made a deep impression on her.
I vividly remember the first air raid on Birmingham. My Mother was taking two casaras (opening medicine) when the sirens went. She ran upstairs to fetch John, who was five, wrapped him in a blanket and proceeded downstairs. I followed her and she thought she was at the bottom of the stairs, but as she wasn鈥檛 I fell on top of her! Then we proceeded to the air raid shelter in the garden. Again we both fell in as we did not have any steps! At the end of the night Mother still had her cascara tablets in her hand, but I do not think she needed them any more! After that night we made the shelter fir to sleep in. I remember mother scooping out the water from the shelter many nights. Another night we came out of the house to find the sky ablaze with flames. We were frightened to death. It seems one of the barrage balloons in Handsworth Park had come adrift and had burst into flames.
The war went on and the bombing got worse in 1940. Every night it seemed to me that we went down into the shelter. If you explained to the youngsters today that nearly every night, whatever the weather- rain, cold, snow- you went down through the darkness of the garden to this hole (the shelter), they would think you were mad! This is what we endured night after night. The raids got worse- incendiaries, delayed action bombs, people had to go to the baths on Grove lane which had been turned into a shelter while you waited for either the bomb to go off or be defused.
It must have been very difficult for the adult population, they not only had day jobs but hundreds of people did voluntary work at night, the A.R.P, the civil defence, auxiliary fire service, specials in the police, WRVS and many more. They must have been worn out but still went to work the next morning to produce munitions, spitfire, etc.
On the 11th December 1940 we were all settled in the shelter when Mrs. Murphy (our neighbour whose children were in the shelter with us) knocked on the door saying she had a jug of cocoa for us. We opened the door and a mighty explosion occurred. I could hear screaming from other shelters. The next thing I knew I had slithers of glass down by back. It seemed that the windows had landed on top of the ventilation pipe and hence down my back. At the end of all this, Mrs Murphy still had the cocoa in her hand! It had been very quiet that night and we all intended to go to the toilet- good job we did not as the whole of the back of the house had collapsed and the toilet had vanished beneath the rubble. Four land mines had drifted down by parachute that night bringing their silent message of death. Two mines were defused and one went off later after all the people had been evacuated. Our landmine drifted on the other side of the road landing on the air raid shelters between the gardens of two roads, thus dozens of people died that night. Two ARP wardens ran towards the parachute as it was drifting down , thinking I suppose that they were Germans> Both of them were badly injured.
Our lives changed forever that night. Our house was condemned the next morning and we were not allowed to go in. The whole of the back of the house caved in and there was not much left of the front either. I do not remember what happened next, but that night we lost many friends and neighbours. Thus ended my happy days in Handsworth.

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