大象传媒

WORLD WAR TWO EXPERIENCES.

Part Three

After the 鈥淎ll Clear鈥� had sounded all the neighbours would congregate in the street to see if all was well and to see if any one had been injured or killed, and to see if any houses had been hit and to give each other comfort and help.
My friends and I would go round the streets looking for shrapnel and shell nose caps but alas like the old saying 鈥渃uriosity killed the cat鈥� became true to life when my friend Graham picked up a fire bomb and was badly injured including losing a hand.

We now had our first experience of the horrors of war, but boys will be boys and raid after raid we still carried on exploring the streets only to come across some very sickening sites which no child or grown ups should have to see. Whilst an Air Raid was on, and when he was not doing his turn on Fire Watch duty my Dad used to go up to the house to make a cup of tea. While he waited for the kettle to boil he would stand in the doorway watching 鈥淕erry鈥� drop his bombs, until one night he had just gone indoors to make the tea and there was a large thud on the door where he had been standing. On opening the door he found a large piece of shrapnel embedded in the door, so it was fortunate for him that the kettle boiled when it did.

On one tour of the city after An air Raid looking at the damage and devastation one could not help but think but for the grace of God go I, when we saw buses and trams sticking out of the roof of a factory and whole streets of houses raised to the ground. Apart from the every day trauma we experienced during and after an air raid my one brother and I were out looking for souvenirs when a lone German plane came in low dropping his bombs and machine gunning. Fortunately for us an Air Raid Warden threw us to the ground. I do not remember anything after that, only being pushed down a Hospital ward with all its beds covered in red blankets and lined up like soldiers on parade. I do not know if the warden survived or not I only know we would not have, if he had not taken the action that he did.

A further close shave came, I believe it was when we had a thirteen hour raid, when a bomb hit a row of houses just a few hundred yards from our shelter and it lifted up and dropped down again, leaving us all very shocked but still alive.
During the bad times schools were being used as First Aid posts and clothing centres for those who had been bombed out, so we had our schooling in peoples houses for what it was worth.
At the start of the Air Raids on Birmingham we used to hear the sweet sound of the Spitfire Rolls Royce Merlin engines against the Hum, Hum, Hum, of the German bombers, but they soon disappeared, we were told that they had been sent to defend London.

Where it was possible when not receiving schooling and not playing in bombed out buildings the word got round that certain items were coming into the local shops we were sent to join the queue until our turn came, sometimes to find that they had sold out, only to be told better luck next time. .

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