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14 — David Warner (aged 69) reminisces about his schooldays in Stratford during the war:

“I began the war in Birmingham, on the Pershore Road where my dad had a wallpaper shop, but it was right opposite the Pavilion Picture House which the Germans thought was part of the Austin Motor Factory, so they ceaselessly bombed, but didn’t hit it once. Instead they did damage to our roof, and they bombed out some neighbours. We had to move out, and my father was moved to Stratford, having worked at the Alvis in Coventry on the Merlin engines, and there was a secret factory which was a sugar warehouse, where Tesco now stands, and that’s where he helped to set up a repair and assembly unit doing Merlin engines, under the auspices of the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

I enjoyed the war much better than my brother who was older, and knew what the score was, and he was terrified. He had to wear ear muffs at night (this is before we moved to Stratford), and I wore them and I thought it was a lot of fun, and I used to dance in the garden and watch the lights of the flak, the anti-aircraft fire. Shrapnel used to whiz past, but I used to shine my torch at the Germans; I thought they were great fun, giving me this firework display. I washed my gas mask in hot soap and water ‘cos I wanted to look good (ruined the filters completely). Yes, I really enjoyed that part.

I then went to a Dame School in the Cotswolds for six months when we moved out temporarily to some friends’ cottage, and then we had to find somewhere to live. [See his father, Reg Warner’s account above for this part of the story].

When we came to live in Alveston I travelled daily to Broad Street School in Stratford. At a very young age we were cycling along the road, the Wellesbourne Road to Stratford with my brother. I was frightened of the teachers; they were nearly all lady teachers, and every one of them was called ‘Old Ma’- Old Ma Hastings, Old Ma Lacy — these were their actual names. Mr Glover was the head. He was a lovely chap. Yes, ‘cos I unfortunately kicked the shins of Old Ma Hastings who was trying to hit me with a ruler at the back of the legs. I suppose it was a knee jerk reaction! She sent me to Mr Glover and he said ‘have a Mars Bar’ and sent me to the post, to post a letter. It was his way of dealing with… I happened to be…I was a first offender.

Recently my sister met up with Roger Dyer who was a school pal of mine — I think he’s now an architect or a lawyer. Another friend was Paul Pearce of Pearce’s café in Wood Street — he had a birthday party. We didn’t have birthday parties as a rule, and I didn’t realize that the birthday boy had to blow the candles out; also we couldn’t buy toys or anything, so I am afraid Paul had one of my toys wrapped up.

At the age of ten we moved back to Birmingham and it broke my heart. I was in love with a little girl as you always are at ten; the little girl loved my dog more than me, ‘cos we had a ‘Pet Day’, and she begged to be allowed to stay in at playtime and attend to young Peter, my dog — that’s as close as I got. To move Peter the dog to the Pershore Road was terrible, he would just sit in the middle of the tram lines scratching his ear, ‘cos he was brought up in a little village, and he had to go to live with my aunt unfortunately.
Then I went to school in Birmingham, Selly Park Junior School, where the aeroplanes had machine-gunned the children, way above their height luckily, and we used to prise the lead out of the brickwork. But I remember those planes attacking civilians down the Pershore Road before we moved out to Stratford, and they ran into our shop screaming, and in a terrible state, off the tram — I have memories of that.

(Back in the comparative peace of Warwickshire) I think my heart’s always been in the River Avon — if you know what I mean! My brother and I used to help with Frank Needle’s punts at Alveston, and he used to let us take punts up that wonderful stretch of water up to Charlecote.

(As well as cycling to school we often used the bus service when it came to Alveston).
The Stratford Blue Bus Company had inspectors who were figures of authority and we were rather scared of them. Our biggest thrill was to have the double decker arrive in Alveston to take us to school, and I couldn’t believe the conductress wouldn’t let us go upstairs, and so we were very miffed by that, having to go ‘inside’, but eventually we did go upstairs. There was a bit of scuffling going on one day, coming round Knights Lane into the Loxley Road, and the bus lurched, and a boy put his head through the window. (which was closed at the time). The driver came running up the stairs, angry, saying what’s going on up here? Wasn’t really the boys fault, but the driver had left his handbrake off, so the bus started to edge towards the hedge, and the bus driver got his come uppance by falling down the stairs in his haste - just about got to the cab as the bus came right up against an oak tree, or was it an elm — there were elms in those days, it might well have been an elm tree. But coming over Clopton Bridge it was a wonderful experience because you couldn’t see the road, and you just thought you were over the water, sitting on top of the Stratford Blue.

One day I missed the bus, and I was terrified about this, ‘cos I knew my parents would be worried; I had missed it once before, and I started to run home, from the Red Lion bus station, and as the bus goes round Loxley Road and Knights Lane,, I went along the main road and I arrived home, fell to the floor exhausted and my mom said to me, you’re early! I had beaten the bus — that was one of my early triumphs in running.
The bus was responsible for an accident I had: the Stratford Blue bus came across Evesham Place and I… We used to borrow a girl’s bike at school in the lunch hour and go round the block. And I don’t know if the girl wanted us to borrow her bike, but young lads, we did this, and I didn’t realize it hadn’t got brakes, so I came up to the crossroads — I think there was an air raid shelter on the island, I think so, but the bus driver didn’t see me in time; I bashed into the side of the bus, the bike went under the bus, but the Stratford Herald made a lovely story of it : and the plucky lad went … under, narrowly missing being squashed by the rear wheels.’ The sad thing was the driver lost his job, and it really wasn’t his fault. My brother had the biggest shock, because a lady was holding up my sandal dripping in blood; I had been taken to Stratford Hospital to have a lip stitched and my leg seen to, and I was taken home in a police car, which overtook my father who was going home for lunch that day on his bike. He fell off his bike, being accosted by a police car, and it was a terrible shock for him. When I got back to school after some weeks at home, the Headmistress held me up as an example of a naughty little boy who took little girls’ bicycles: I was a moral lesson for everyone. That little girl had my bike because her bike had been crushed. That was my punishment."

I have put some more of my experiences on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ WW2 website under the title ‘A Child’s Eye View of the Birmingham Blitz, Parts 1,2 and 3, so this interview will tie in and overlap slightly."
[Below David has written what could be called Part 4 of his own WW2 contribution]

Broad Street School, known as the Council School in those days, was where I learnt reading and writing, singing and sums; learnt also to play-fight and to fall in love with the girls. Having experienced with great joy and enthusiasm the Birmingham Blitz at close quarters as only a heedless four year-old could, I found life a bit tame here, with a gas mask as my only reminder of War. Nevertheless, events to do with wartime soon affected my life, the first being the removal of the school railings to provide iron for the foundries. We felt like liberated prisoners, and whenever the football bounced into the street We all leapt over the low wall to retrieve it. Once, however, while I was cavorting in Broad Street during playtime, I saw the dread figure of a policeman on the corner, taking out his notebook and licking his pencil. I spent a sleepless night, hoping that he wouldn't be waiting for me in the classroom the next day.
The absence of the railings allowed us an undreamt-of treat one morning late on in the War: thundering along Chestnut Walk an endless convoy of American trucks appeared, and as each one passed the school playground, black American soldiers threw bags of sweets and other treats, shouting 'catch your candies, all you little chillun!' For some reason our teachers were not pleased, but we were delighted to take eager part in the bunfight that followed the convoy's progress. In the town we used to march behind unsuspecting GIs, imitating their easy stride, shouting 'Got any gum chum?' - a phrase which I'm sure was so overworked that they must have felt great irritation eventually.
The Canadian soldiers got drunk one night, and because the locals were too slow in offering billets for them, they took out their resentment on poor old Shakespeare and all his bronze characters, whom they knocked off their stone plinths, and gave them a bath in the Avon - Hamlet, Falstaff, and all of them. Did you not wonder why the statues looked so green in the post-war years? The asphalt front of the Theatre became the drill ground for all the forces stationed nearby, and the marching men became another impressive sight for us small boys.
The wounded troops were also with us, and used to sit on the balcony of the Mulberry Tree House at the foot of Bridge Street (now BHS), palely smoking cigarettes in their blue invalid garb.
1 used to feel sorry for them, as I did also for the Italian prisoners with their yellow circular patches; it wasn't until I was much older that I realized the irony of luxury coaches transporting them, whilst British soldiers had to ride in troop lorries. Also the Italians fell out of favour in our family when one of the prisoners stole my Mum's bicycle outside Henson's the Butcher.
Food was always on my mind, or the absence of it. The butter ration was sliced out of a huge square slab in Noakes and Crofts in Wood Street, likewise the cheese, and I always hoped for a spare noggin of standard cheese to be popped in my mouth by the shop assistant. A treat was a bar of Blended chocolate (plain and milk combined), wrapped in a paper sleeve with no foil of course.

Midday dinner in the British Restaurant in High Street was less of a treat, more of a weird experience tasting (or not) unidentifiable root vegetables boiled to extinction in a watery soup. Sausages were bread, I was greatly pleased when we changed the lunch time routine to walk from school to my Dad's factory on the Birmingham Road, to have a sandwich in the Wages Office and be fussed over by the women clerks.
Dad was transferred there from Coventry as Works Manager, and he spent seven days a week there very often, so we saw little of him. On Sundays 1 sometimes helped the War Effort there (1 think) by sorting out the aviation nuts, bolts and screws,
In the matter of food, and of the War Effort, at the age of eight! won a Raffle to raise funds. The prize was a cake as big as a target, but I had to collect it from the Mayor's Parlour in Stratford Town Hall. It took me days to pluck up courage to go through those big doors; however, one afternoon on the way to the bus station I found the doors open, crept inside where an imposing flunkey told me to follow him into the Mayor's Parlour (said the spider to the fly), in the gloom of that interior he handed me a cake 1 could hardly carry in exchange for my by now grubby raffle ticket. It presented a huge problem on the crowded Midland Red bus, where a fat lady all but sat on it beside me. As I walked down Kissing Tree Lane to Alveston village where I lived, I was followed by a growing band of children who hung about outside our cottage until Mum gave them all a piece, leaving precious little for my brother and me, apart from a warm glow produced by a Christian sense of sharing (I would rather have had more cake).
Another raffle took place at the greengrocer's at the top end of Bridge Street - the prize? A banana, which we stared at, not having seen tropical fruit of any description, It went black before it could be claimed.
My final War Effort was to join in the school's Book Drive, where we were given military badges of rank according to the number of unwanted books salvaged. I reached the rank of Captain with some hundred books collected, amongst them a six volume Allison 's History of Europe, smoothly bound in tan calf. Needless to say the set is still in my family's possession - sorry!
Although I know of no bombs landing on Stratford town in the war, we did have our moments of drama and indeed tragedy. The tragedy occurred in 1943 when a Wellington bomber with engine failure crashed in the field behind our cottage and bordering Kissing Tree Lane. My mother had the radio on, and heard nothing of the five aircrew hurtling past her chimney, on their wounded way down, staying with their plane to avoid the village. But our next-door neighbour, Doris Pitcher, had heard, and seen the plunging blur of throttled noise. Clad in her wrap-round apron and fluffy slippers she sprinted unevenly over the furrows, strode amongst the triangles of Perspex, the stubs of propellers and the smoking dead engines, to drag the airmen out. If a brave woman's will could have saved them, they would have lived. But those not dead died on their way to hospital Base was one mile away For weeks the village children picked and ferreted about the wreckage, seeking Perspex glass to cut and shape with knives into badges, toys and love-rings. Three were a young Canadian crew from the Training Unit at Wellesbourne The plane was called Queenie, the crew from Saskatchewan, piloted by Flight Sergeant James, aged 19. Major Parkes, from the village, wrote to his parents to tell them what a heroic sacrifice had been made, and how proud they ail should be of the crew of HF632, Two RAF aircrew were also on board.

Now for the drama - or comic drama. The Auxiliary Fire Service, bless them, had their work cut out to deal with fires with inadequate equipment, and because of slow communications and even slower preparation time, 1 witnessed them having to watch two fires burn themselves out. One was at Hyam's bakery in our village, where they rescued the dummy packets of tea from the shop window while the baker and his wife stayed warmly tucked up in the bedroom at the back - until it became too warm. A ladder was eventually raised towards the burning roof, and a fireman, vulnerably silhouetted against a dying fire, pathetically piddled into the spitting maw of the roof, with half a tap's pressure in half a hose.
The other fire occurred in one of those beautiful thirties houses that grace the Tiddington Road. Again the roof was burned out while the men hatcheted the lead-light windows, for some unfathomable reason. Thankfully no one was hurt in either conflagration, and my favourite house on the Tiddington Road next door to the fire, was undamaged. Years later the green-blue pantiles, balconied elevations and curved window casements were 'updated' by some architectural vandal, so that today it looks no more distinctive than the other post war houses nearby.

Peace time eventually came, but the promised ice creams were not forthcoming for many a month, by which time I had returned to Birmingham with my family, to eat Midland Counties Lucky Boy twopenny cornets. 1 left behind my school friends, Roger Dyer, Paul Pearce and Michael Paxton, and also a girl with blonde pigtails, who gave all her affection to my little spaniel dog, much to my exquisite pain and pleasure. I remember her name too - Diana Huxley

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