大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Tim Davoile on behalf of Doris Hopkins and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Joan recalls. 鈥榃hen war broke out I was seven years old and went to Moseley Avenue School with my sister Gladys, who鈥檚 five years older than me. Of course, we didn鈥檛 get proper schooling, we only went for the half-day. Mornings one week and afternoons the following week, and that鈥檚 how we carried on. At the beginning we would all be put in the same class, age didn鈥檛 matter. I feel I sacrificed a lot, with regards my education, due to the war. They (the government) wanted us to be evacuated, but our mother wouldn鈥檛 let us go. She said, 鈥淚f one goes, we鈥檒l all go鈥�.

My Dad served his time at Alfred Herberts as an internal grinder. During the war he had to sign on every evening at the Christadelphian Hall in Upper Well Street, to do his fire watching duty. I use to go with him because the woman caretaker would give me a sweet, and what you鈥檇 do for a sweet in times of rationing. He put many incendiary fires out.
One night an incendiary fell on number 11, Cherry Street. It went right through the roof, both the upstairs and downstairs ceilings and landed in the front room, where the lady of the house, a Mrs Whelan, was sat at her industrial sewing machine (she was an outworker). My dad and his friend, Jock, forced the door open and put it out with sand and water. Buckets of sand and water were left around all over the place, just in case they were needed. It was the same when they dropped incendiaries on the gasometer, everybody had to go and help put the fire out.

The gas works use to keep a vat of hot tar on the back of a lorry, so that a gang of men could go round repairing broken gas pipes. Of course, most of the time they were fighting a losing battle, there were nights when just about everywhere was ablaze. This one night they dropped a bomb on the gas works and the blast throw the men into the hot tar. After the war, when I was working for the gas (on leaving school at 14, Joan went to work for the G.E.C. in the drawing office. At 21 she joined the gas board and continued to work there until she retired), I met one of the men and saw he had lost three of his fingers and half his hand from his injuries. There were some sad sights. A lad I was at school with was sat at home when an incendiary hit his house and he was badly burnt to the chest. Of course, there was no covering it up, no messing, you鈥檇 got it, too bad, and you just had to get on with things. There was no such thing as counselling then, you looked after yourself.
Some people had what they called Morrison shelters, they were like big metal tables and people would hide under them, to protect them from falling masonry. They found one family all dead. There wasn鈥檛 a mark on them. The shelter had stopped things falling on them but the blast had sucked the air from their lungs. Sometimes, following big air raids, there would be that many killed that they would have to bury them in communal graves. There was a big gate opposite Saint Osburgs Church, which opened onto the back of the gas works. All the bodies were taken there for holding. They would take them in a horsebox in cardboard boxes. Some were complete people, others were just bits of people. Then relatives would have to try and identify them.

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