大象传媒

This has been written by my mother Poppy Middleton (Nee Margaret Rose Johnson) born 11/11/32 at 3/148 Bordesley Green, Birmingham.
I am the youngest of 11, I had 6 brothers and 4 sisters. One sister died in 1919 aged 3. My grandparents on our mother鈥檚 side were named Turner and owned a green grocers on Norwood Road. My grandparents on my fathers side, his father (Johnson) was from the Fairground people (Collins fairground), his mother from the barge people, her name was Clayton (of Fellows, Morton, and Clayton).

Our family of 12 lived in a very small house in Birmingham at the start of the War. It had 1 room downstairs plus a cubby-hole kitchen, 1 bedroom and an attic. The boys slept 3 to a bed, the girls slept 3 to a bed and the rest were spread around anywhere. The very narrow kitchen only had room for a stove and wash basin, the coal being kept at the other end. This was typical of all houses by us 鈥� large families, small homes.

The house was one in a block of houses, 5 back to back, and the washhouse for all 10 houses was at the side of the block. Our block was surrounded on three sides by houses, and on the fourth by Mulliners car (later ammunition) factory, separated only by a passage way which ran the whole length of the factory. This passage - Byfield Passage that went from Norwood Road to Humpage Road, had a huge wall down the house side. We were in the heart of the factory district, and close to the BSA. We had to go up an entry from the main Bordesley Green Road to our block, which were at the back of the houses on the main road. The block of houses had little gardens out front, used for growing vegetables, and in which we put the Anderson Shelter.

When WW2 started my eldest sister Lily, and eldest brothers, Jack 24 (a footballer for the Blues second team), and Harry 21 joined the armed forces (1939/40). Jack and Harry went into the RAF and Lily the WRAF. My brother Alf joined the Army in 1940 (18yrs) and brother Joe joined the Navy in 1941 (18yrs), whilst brother Edgar joined the RAF in 1943.

Jack served in the Indian Ocean mainly on a ship called The Dumana, servicing Sunderland flying boats. One of his ships was torpedoed and he had to swim 2 miles to land, being fit he managed it, but saw many of his friends drown on the way. He spent time in Natal, South Africa, Madagascar, the Maldives, Ceylon, and India (Bombay, Aggra, Karachi and New Delhi). At the end of the war he was stationed in Uetersen Germany on an aerodrome, where he befriended and helped a German aircraft gunner get his family across from the Russian side to the British side. He helped find whatever food he could for them as things were scarce, and although he asked nothing in return, the German Herbert Flege gave him his uniform regalia as a memento. Jack said that when travelling through Holland to get to Germany, the people were so starving they ate the food that had been trampled into the floor of the lorry, after the lorry had been emptied.

Harry was stationed in South Africa, Cape Town. Alf went through the African Desert and Italy, and Joe was on different ships. One of these ships also got torpedoed, he and his friend were blown completely off the ship and the Americans picked them both up (stark naked from the blast). Edgar was stationed at Manstan aerodrome in Kent and Lily stayed somewhere in England, initially hating it and wishing to come home.

There was 6 of us left at home; two sisters Mary and Gladys (twins to Alf and Joe respectively) 鈥� who worked in the ammunitions factory; Jimmy and me who were still at school; Mom and Dad (Lilian and John). Dad worked for Birmingham City Council as a street paver and had to help clean-up all the bombed buildings each day after the bombing the night before. He used to bring pieces of shrapnel home for us, of course we didn鈥檛 realise at the time, but it must have been quite a dangerous job. Mary got into the Wrens but mom did not want to 鈥渓oose鈥� any more of her children, so she tore up her papers. Our Mother would not let us be evacuated, she wanted the rest of her family close by, so we went all through the war in Birmingham. We sat night after night in the shelter listening to the German planes going overhead and dropping the bombs. We could always tell which were Germans by the sound of the droning. The shelter was very cold and cramped and often flooded up to the first 鈥渓edge鈥�.

One night when our Anderson shelter was flooded, our Mother sent Jimmy and myself with our sister Gladys to the big shelter at the top of Byfield passage. However it got bombed and we had to run home down Byfield passage (1/4 mile), which was covered with incendiary bomb holes that had fallen earlier. Gladys kept shouting jump over the holes, as she held our hands and ran whilst the air raid was still on. Our Mother could hear us crying on the other side of the wall but had to wait till we had run down the passage, street and entry to get home.

We got bombed out three times, but were allowed back twice, although all the houses around our single block were debris. The first time we were bombed out we had to stay in the village hall at Earlswood, then the village hall at Hampton-in-Arden. As the houses on the main Bordesley Green road were all bombed we used to play building little houses with bricks and rubble, my brother found a human foot in a shoe one day.

The third time we were bombed out we couldn鈥檛 go back because an unexploded mine was behind our house. We had to leave most things behind, the boys lost all their old comics, and Dad lost two big paintings he had won fishing, because he said that that was probably the only thing holding up the wall in the house. In the attached photo, there is one of mom (Lilian) sat outside our house after the last bombing. We then had to go into a house dormitory in City Road Birmingham for a few weeks till the council gave us a house in Broadstone Road, Sheldon.

As there were a lot of factories near us all doing war work our school was one of the first to get bombed, so we used to go to a house in Palace road three mornings a week for lessons, later we had to catch the tram to Tilton Road school. Schooling was very disrupted, and we struggled to catch-up with some of the other children. For Christmas all I remember getting was an Apple and Orange. Towards the end of the war Mom and I used to travel all the way to Saltley Gas works from Sheldon, with a pram to collect coke for the fire. I stood in the queue from 7am whilst mom did the shopping, and came back at 9 in time for us to get a sack of coke each (you were only allowed one per person). We had to wheel it home on the pram, and one of the wheels kept falling off. We got part of the way home on the bus but had to walk nearly two miles with it.

All my brothers and sister, and brother in law Albert (in the Army/prisoner of war), all came back safe and sound, got married and had families, so amazingly we all survived.

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