大象传媒

I was born in Belbroughton, of an old Belbroughton family. I went to the village school and Then moved to Catshill County Senior School on the day it first opened, Everything completely new!

I remember our gardening Teacher taking us on one side and telling us that the Germans had taken France and could be in England in a matter of two weeks!

On arriving home from school I told my Dad, who was an old soldier who fought on the Somme in the First World War. 鈥淩ubbish鈥� he said 鈥渨e鈥檝e got the Canadians, the Australians and the rest of the Empire, and now a good leader in Winston Churchill, we shall knock the hell out of them.鈥� I went to bed That night feeling much better!

In a week or two The evacuees began to arrive in the village; some came from Rookery Road School in Handsworth and others from Felixstowe, Suffolk, all complete with gasmasks in cardboard boxes with Their name and address on, and a pack of 鈥榠ron rations鈥� with terrible biscuits no-one could eat. The reason we had evacuees from Felixstowe was because a German Naval ship had shelled a number of buildings on That coast causing casualties. All evacuees first went to the Church Hal and were Then taken to families who had volunteered to take them in. We had volunteered to have two but had three for most of the war. We also had an agreement the the evacuee committee to take extra until permanent accommodation could be found for Them.

This was no mean feat for a cottage with two bedrooms and a landing, no bathroom, just an outside washhouse with cold water, a gas cooker and a cast iron boiler. There was a pig sty behind the washhouse and of course the little house up the garden 鈥� no deep drainage in Belbroughton then!

Our evacuees were two eleven year old boys, Norman Howell and Roland Flower from Birmingham. They soon settled in and took to Dad and Mother like ducks to water. Mother won them over with her cooking and Dad soon had all three of us cleaning his Home Guard Equipment and pulling the pull-through down his rifle barrel. As we helped he told us stories of the first World War; to take of minds off the bombing really I Think; for as we sat round our cottage fire you could clearly hear the Wob-wob-wob sound of the German bombers going over on their way to bomb Birmingham and Coventry.

Both boys loved the countryside and we soon became like brother. However, Roland Flowers mother missed him so badly that after about a year she came and took him back home. I remember how he cried when he had to leave us. We then had Norman Howell鈥檚 Mother and his younger brother come to us and They stayed until all the bombing had ceased.

We were told by the A.R.P. Wardens that if the sirens went off in The night we must stay downstairs as it would be safer and to make sure all windows were blacked out an showing no light. My grandmother, who was 89 years old, lived two doors away from us and one night when the sirens sounded Dad said he would stay with Mother and the two boys and I would go and wake Grandmother and get her downstairs. By the time she was awake and managed to put on one black stocking the All Clear had sounded. She got back into bed and declared 鈥淭hat鈥檚 the last time Hitler gets me out of bed 鈥� I鈥檒l live to see him turned into cannon-fodder鈥� and she lived to be 96 years old and Hitler had gone!

During all the time we had the evacuees I slept in Mom and Dad鈥檚 room on a canvas camp bed, something like a stretcher with two handles - I fell off it once or twice but got quite used to it.

I clearly remember the German bombers going over Belbroughton to try and bomb the Austin Motor works. They seemed to be travelling very slowly. The big gun sited on Walton Hill fired several times but the planes went on their way. The gun was a bit of a menace to villagers at times as sometimes the shells failed to explode. One such came over making a noise like an Express train causing Me Rogers, our village policeman, to dive off his bicycle into a ditch in the Dark Lane. This unexploded shell landed somewhere in Ash Meadow at the back of Nash Works 鈥� it could still be there!

The night on which Clent Children鈥檚 Home was bombed Norman and I were walking along The High Street when suddenly The whole street lit up and there was a Terrific explosions which seemed to make The whole village shake 鈥� I suppose Clent Hills caused the noise to echo down the valley magnifying The sound.

I remember clearly many other happenings in our village during the war such as all The metal railings, which stood in front of most houses, being got up and taken away to be melted down and used by factories. At certain points around the village there were cables on one side of the road ready to be stretched across the road in case of a German invasion.

I also remember there were four large bins on the High Street; one was for rags, one for scrap metal, one for bones and the other for any scraps that could be processed for pig food. At one time the butcher put part of a smelly pig鈥檚 head in the bone bin and someone moved a first world war helmet from the Scrap Metal bin and placed it on the pig鈥� head and put it where everyone could see it 鈥� it certainly caused a smile.

I left school at 14 years of age and my first job was for Clements, the Signwriters in Bromsgrove. They had a small workforce contracted to fit cross-tension wires in shop windows in the High Street, Bromsgrove to counteract Bomb blast. Often the air raid sirens sounded while we worked and on one occasion after the all-clear sounded Three Spitfires appeared in formation doing a Victory Roll over the town, a practice later to be discontinued. I鈥檓 afraid I left after a few months as my wages was only 12/6d per week and I had to cycle the six miles there and back each day.

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