大象传媒

This article was submmited to the People War site by Martin Hough, a volunteer on CSV Actiondesk on behalf of Mr Fred Williams,and has been added to the site with his permission Mr Williams fully understands the sites terms and condition.

I was 11 years old when the Prime Minister came over the radio, and declared that we was at war with Germany. I remember it well, we lived in Palace Road, Birmingham, and all the people came out into the street and stood talking in groups about the news. That night was the first of the "blackout" it seemed that all the street lights were out, and we had to be very careful not to show any light or the Home Guard would shout out "put that light out" because the German planes would see the lights.

I remember that later on they painted the curbs in the street with white paint and everyone carried torches so they could see in the dark. Every house in my street dug a large hole in their back garden to put an Anderson shelter in, so that when the air raid sirens went off we all went down the shelter. We were given gas masks, an I.D. card and ration books. When the bombing started all schools, cinemas and football matches were closed. We spent most nights in the air raid shelter, after the air raids all the children looked in the streetsfor pieces of shrapnel from our guns. The guns were sighted in the parks along with search lights and barrage balloons which the A.T.S. manned.

Anything that was metal went towards the making of shells and any aluminium towards the manufacture of Spitfires, food was on ration and there was bins in the road to collect left overs for the pigs. I had a paper round and i used to go back every day with papers i could'nt deliver because the house had been bombed. We had to leave the street about four times because time bombs had been found and we spent all our time in the park or at someones house having a cup of tea until the Army made it safe.

One night a bomb fell in the gardens between Palace road and Whitehall road, about ten houses were hit and all the windows in my house were blown out. We went to live with my Aunt for two to three months until they found us a house. My Uncle was killed in France, we were later told it was at Dunkirk. All the children had maps in their bedrooms so they could follow the war, the R.A.F. were fighting and slowly winning the Battle of Britain.

After a while the raids eased off, we stopped carrying gas masks, shops re-opened and life was a little better. I left school at 14 years of age, but I had to go where I was told to go. I started in a press shop and made ammunition boxes and a lot of bits but we were never told what they were for, we also made petrol cans that we copied off the Germans these were called Geri-cans, still in use today. A young lad I worked with was called up into the Army and was posted to Burma and later we heard he had been killed.

I spent the last eighteen months of the war working in a garage mending Army lorries and we had the REME with us for training, I was seventeen at the time and waiting to go into the RAF when the war ended, I later joined the RAF and was posted to Hong Kong and Singapore and enjoyed myself very much.

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