大象传媒

email to www.bbc.uk. /ww2

10/11/2003
John. A. Morris.
17 Brook Close,
Shirley,
Solihull.
West Midlands.
B90 1AB.
Tele, 0121 430 3071.

Dear Sirs,
With reference to you request for wartime memories, I am enclosing an extract from memories
I have put on computer for the benefit of my family.
At the outbreak of war I was out of school just one month having started work with
Ten Acres & Stirchley Co-op.
It was poorly paid & grocery deliveries were being phased out due to staff going into the forces.
I left after a few months not before being taken into a isolation hospital with suspected Scarlet fever & diphtheria, this was January 1940 when we had a snowfall that brought every thing to a
stand still.
The snowfall was 3 to 4 feet deep & nurses all struggled to work come what may.
I felt very sorry for them as not only was it bitterly cold outside but they had to wash their hands after every job no matter how small.
This resulted in them having permanently sore hands, I was there a month and during this time
French windows were thrown open every day all down the ward, fresh air thought to be the cure all.
Luckily at night a big stove in the centre was stoked up & nurses on night duty were able to sit round it, ward lights being dimmed.
But woe betide them if matron came round & all wasn鈥檛 well.
This hospital is now known as Heartlands amalgamated with Solihull,

My next job was with Birmingham Crown corks at Kings Norton factory centre, a one man firm that had two employees myself & a neighbour about three years older than me.
We made tin plate bottle tops, myself making the crowns on a press, my pal inserting the cork inserts on a gluing machine.
We also made the packing cases to dispatch them to customers, also stacking deliveries of
cork bales & timber for the cases.
These were collected & delivered by horse & dray of the l.m.s. railway from Lifford goods yard.
Next door was the Brook Bond Tea warehouse, deliveries in distinctive red & white vans powered by two stroke air-cooled engines & chain driven.
My pal Dave Peters being called up electing to go into the navy.
Air raids at that time resulted in the estate being targeted with incendery bombs several houses being hit; everyone including air raid wardens joined in putting them out.
A long handled spade & a bucket of sand were the tools of air raid wardens plus a tin hat
One silly person threw a bucket of water over one causing it to explode something you were warned about doing, as sand was the recommended sultan.
A tin hat with a. r. w. Printed on it was his uniform, Later a boiler suit was provided.
Apart from the danger of property being set on fire we hastened to put them out for fear of other pilots seeing them.
I must admit hearing the all clear sounding was quite a relief.

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If the intended target was the factory centre they were at least a mile off target.
One night when going to the loco to sign on at midnight, walking through the tunnel a lone figure was sitting with his back to the gas lamp situated in the middle trying to get some sleep was a G.I.
{An American soldier} obviously having taken a girl home & missed any chance of getting transport back to base.
I felt a certain amount of frustration during air raids, as there was no way you could retaliate when hearing aircraft overhead.

I heard of vacancies at Bournville Loco Motive Power depot, starting as a engine
cleaner this gave me an insight to the workings of a railway engine, prior to becoming a
Fireman then driver.
Cleaning engines was only to last a month as I & Harold Amos [Enoch to us] were put on
the night shift as knocker ups.
For this we were instructed to use a stone as knocking a door was forbidden between 11pm & 7 am, due to a local bylaw.
I often wondered if it was ever rescinded.

In this day & age I would think they are more technical perhaps using a peashooter & dried peas to shoot at windows.

This entailed calling drivers & firemen coming on shift at all times of the night
these being split into two rounds that was split into two areas one covering Stirchley & Selly Oak & the other Cotteridge Kings Norton & Pineapple estate.
All this during the blackout & using the bikes mine being equipped with paraffin lamps front & rear, Harold`s being a new ladies had a dynamo.
On the 3 rd or 4th night we set off from the loco shed going down Victoria rd he wanted to go left me right, trouble was we were on opposite sides & as we turned to go our separate ways we collided my pedal going into his back wheel ripping out several spokes.
This meant we had to walk the nearest calls the other one using the only bike for the farthest until the bike was repaired.
It was at this time that the heaviest air raids were taking place, a tin hat being issued to us two lads.
During one air raid & using the tin hat I started off from the loco going down hill I heard what I thought was a bomb whistling down, braking I prepared to dive into the gutter but on stopping the noise had stopped.
Carrying on as I gathered speed back came the whistling noise, It was only on the third occasion
I realised it was the air holes in the tin hat causing the whistling noise, the faster I went the louder the noise.
This was the night landmines were dropped one landing in Healey rd Selly Oak, this flattened the
the whole street.
I can relate to people getting caught out in a snowstorm as in the deep snow of 40 /41
we had to walk the calls, and having met up with Enock at the bottom of Cartland rd were a seat was situated we sat down & promptly went to sleep, luckily a driver we had called woke us up
As I feel we would have froze to death.
As it was wartime & staff was in short supply there was a varied variety of labourers, one in
particular being an ex boxer and punch drunk with broken nose & cauliflower ears and flat feet.
He was quite a comedian saying as he hobbled past` do you want to buy a pair of boots that cripple you.
When in the messroom & it was full of foreign train crews from other depots, he would pull out a
broken tobacco pipe bowel & begin telling the story of Ben Brown who died & because he was
a bad character was buried standing up.
He would also take out the head of a nail about as long as your little finger nail & stand it up covering it with the bowel.

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At the same time bending down to look on the floor for a broken matchstick to use as a cross, mean while a pal would take the nail.
Finding a matchstick he would announce that he would forgive Ben Brown by tapping the head of the bowel saying ` Ben Brown your sins are forgiven.
At this point he would ask anyone if they would place a bet that Ben Brown wasn鈥檛 lying down, having seen someone remove the nail they would agree to bet two cigarettes.
Unknown to them a similar nail was hidden in the stem & would be dislodged when tapped
confounding the punter.

As a workplace Bournville loco was the only place I have worked in my life that couldn鈥檛 be accessed by motor vehicle or motor cycle to my knowledge.
Entrance was by a door from the bridge in Maryvale rd & down steps to a footpath some 300 yds long.
As a goodwill gesture on the outbreak of war Bournville Loco was presented with a mobile canteen by the people of Buenos Aires in Argentine, a godsend to us as it helped out with rationing no end.
This was situated outside the messroom door.

The ladies who ran it Mrs Abbots & Mrs Laurence would be kind enough to rush through my order
of spam sandwiches & wrap them when I was behind time as I often was when going off shed.
Also generous when it came to serving me with baked beans & bread & butter when I was calling up, I was known as the baked bean king to others, oranges could also be obtained when available
This caravan on wheels must have been brought into the shed on a flatbed railway truck with no trouble at all, as it was in place when I started in 1941.

Another perk enjoyed by us, classed as manual workers we qualified for extra rations of tea & sweetened condensed milk on a monthly basis.
As a teenager it was common to ask for sandwiches that almost used up a loaf & the spam was quite tasty.
This would have been impossible if I had to rely on the standard rations allowed by the ration book, if I remember it was something like 2 ozs a week of butter & sugar 8 ozs
Every railwaydriver & fireman had a billy can for making tea, so did others such as shunters & guards, wheeltappers etc.
A big cast iron kettle was standard in all messrooms being kept simmering on a coalfire & if you made a mashing of tea you would top it up with water for the next person.
This billy can was usually kept warm on a small shelf above the firebox door & stewed tea was the order of the day.
One day I hung it on the blower handle just above the shelf over the firebox & never noticed the gland was leaking like a dripping tap & an hour later took a swig only to taste water softening chemical out of the boiler, naturally, spitting it out straight away.
When a engine cleaner wanted to become a fireman you first had to be seconded to mate a driver working a shunter in a goods yard or working on the shed moving engines, for every shift doing this it was totted up & to qualify for so many firing turns, I cant recall how many at the moment.
Having qualified you then became a pass cleaner, again totting up so many firing turns to qualify as fireman, for this an inspector would choose a day to come & ride with you during a shift.
You would then be assessed on his report & picked up on any questions you had failed on.
I don`t recall any problems when I passed.
One inspector known to us as Coddy Want was originally a fireman then driver at Bourneville
he spent most of his time at New St station as a inspector.
His claim to fame was his involvement in a major accident at Charmouth Glos` in 1928 as a fireman
the story is still well known today as a mystery still exists as to who were the 2 children killed but
never identified, the story is of a mystery woman who for years commemorated the spot with flowers were they were buried.

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Rumour has it that she was the mistress of a well known v.i.p as I鈥檓 sure today they would be
identified by their school uniforms.
Why they weren鈥檛 is still a mystery to me today.

Not many people know how Cody Wants driver died in horrific circumstances, having had his
chest pierced by a live steam pipe whilst still conscious of it.
This part of the story isn`t mentioned in any reference to it.
This was known as a G.W.R accident & it鈥檚 a mystery to me why L.M.S staff were involved.
The nickname Coddy I suspect stems from the fish siding in New St but I never did find out for sure.
All personnel in charge wore the standard black bowler hat & overcoat, so when a bowler hat
was spotted you behaved yourself.

The only person who was a non conformist was a shed foreman who took over when Matt Burden suddenly died from a heart attack, His name was BIll Keighley the foreman who gave me a no 1 form.
His mode of dress was a brown cow gown & trilby hat, he was given the nick name the white rat {his hair was white} as one time during an air raid he was found hiding in a cupboard, this would have been at Saltley as I can`t recall a time at Bournville when any bombs fell adjacent to the loco.
The nearest was on the horse shoe tunnel at the bottom of Dawberry rd, Kings Heath, where I lived, a stick of bombs straddled the embankment luckily the first five of six bombs that were dropped fell on open land.
The sixth struck the most vulnerable part of the tunnel at its shallowest end killing 11 people in all, six of those from one family whose name was Hollyoak, Alfie a lad much my age could play the harmonica quite well he lost his life
Also killed were a number of horses that grazed in the fields, these judging by the amount of hoof marks that pock marked the field were driven mad by the explosions as they showed no sign of injury.
My father who served as soldier in the first world war was in the air raid rescue squad in the second world war, on the nights Coventry was bombed he was sent there to help out not returning
home for two days & relating how they had dug out of a cellar a young baby the only survivor of a family.
He often wondered how that youngster had progressed in life for a long time afterwards.

As I was in bed when the bomb struck the tunnel a 150yards away, apart from this when I was coaling an engine in the blackout & walking across the top of a tank engine to get down to the floor
I stepped into thin air as someone had left a water tank lid open.
luckily my leg went into the water tank as I fell forward putting all my weight on my thigh.
I thought I had broken it & cursed that person for days afterwards, I can even remember the engine number 2373 as it was a good steamer.
I think those two incidents were the closest I came to death during the war but who knows.

This tunnel ran under the railway embankment for at least 50 yards being bricked up at each end to serve as a air raid shelter.
Not many people used it after that.
Before the war when I was still at school the Pines Express would come past over the tunnel dead on twelve thirty, you could set the clock by it.
The estate was divided by the embankment so needing the horseshoe tunnel to access the other half. {Still there today}

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If the intended target was the factory centre they were at least a mile off target.
One night when going to the loco to sign on at midnight, walking through the tunnel a lone figure was sitting with his back to the gas lamp situated in the middle trying to get some sleep was a G.I. obviously having taken a girl home & missed any chance of getting transport back to base.
a certain amount of frustration during air raids as there was no way you could retaliate when hearing aircraft overhead.

Mentioning shed foreman Matt Burden brings back memories of signing on at twelve thirty am
I had listened to the midnight news which announced the death of president Truman, on going into the messroom I told everyone the sad news, uon which Matt Burden turned on me in a
purple rage calling me a fifth columnist as he had listened to that news & never heard anysuch thing.
Asking what sort of radio I had got was it run on steam.
Me turning bright red in front of everyone.
Shortly after my driver turned up & confirmed what I had said, on this Matt Burden came in and
apologised most profusely giving me ten woodbine cigarettes which were in short supply.
I never held any animosity towards him as he was a good boss in many ways, during summer months when stacking coal for the winter he would send a lad to the shops to purchase pop for us to drink as it was dusty job.
Sadly it was shortly after this he died.
It was an amazing sight for me when war finished & every where was lit up, as I had never worked on the railway other than in the blackout.
To see goods yards & mainline stations under lighting was a sight to behold
The same couldn鈥檛 be said for wayside stations as these were lit by the odd paraffin lamp,
also most signals, giving a lamp man a permanent job amongst other things.
Otherwise a signalman was responible for his own local lamps as was station porters

With regards to the no 1 form I was given, this was a serious offence & merited being sent to
Derby to stand on the carpet in front of the big white chiefs.
The reason I got one was the fact that I had fell asleep in the messroom, this resulted in me calling a driver one hour late.
The driver reported me to the foreman as he was late on duty.
Luckily for me the union shop steward was on duty at 6 am & I asked his advice as to what I
should do, as I had to give an excuse on the form.
He said give me the form & wrote across it. NO WATCH, CLEANER MORRIS. giving it me back saying, go & put that on his desk.
Five minutes later the foreman came storming into the messroom demanding to know what
was going on.
I refereed him to Bob Shorthouse the union chap who was preparing his engine, when he confronted
Bob, Bob tore in to him asking what he was playing as but for the war I shouldn鈥檛 be on nights.
The outcome was he tore it up & I heard no more of it.
One thing that would get a fireman a no 1 form was to drop a lead plug; this is situated in the crown of the firebox.
Its purpose was to prevent serious damage to the engine if the boiler was to run short of
water, the heat would melt the plug causing steam to douse the fire.
I only ever heard of one such case & I think he was dismissed {sacked}.
Engines under the American lease lend scheme, known to us as utility engines weren鈥檛 fitted with a plug in all cases & I heard of some boilers exploding but I wouldn`t be sure it was shortage of water.

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As with most second hand stories it鈥檚 difficult to know the truth.
One thing I know for sure we had something to learn from them as they were fitted with rocking firegrates, this enabled the fireman to clean the fire of clinker much easier.
The fire bars were split into to sides left & right this enabled you to put clean fire to one side, then rock the half dropping the clinker into the ash pan by use of a rocking lever on the footplate.
Repeat the performance putting clean fire back again & cleaning the opposite half, this was much quicker than us using a long handled iron shovel bringing clinker into the cab & throwing it off the engine.
It wasn鈥檛 till this year 2003, that I have heard any reference to a memorial for railway men killed
during the war.
That`s 63 years ago, not that I knew anyone personally although I knew of several deaths but not of consequence of the war these were mainly of heart attacks & accident.
One amusing injury that happened during an air raid was of a pedestrian who was struck in the backside by a piece of shrapnel that had richoshade off the pavement.
Shrapnel was almost as dangerous as the bombs; this was mainly from anti aircraft shells.
I was stood with my brother Ted by the back door where mother had her wash tub half
filled with washing put to soak when a piece whistled into it sizzling as it went into the
cold water.
Shrapnel collecting was a pastime of children, even I saved a piece from the bomb that was dug out of the rubble from the horse shoe tunnel; this was in the shape of a butcher鈥檚 hatchet with very sharp edges.
Over the years it got forgotten & probably went into dads scrap iron as during his sparetime he would collect this from the salvage depot where he was stationed.
Always in great demand during the war.

Hope this is of some use to you; please excuse spelling & gramma it never was my strong point.
J.A.Morris.

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