大象传媒

Mr Beeman attended the 大象传媒 War Memorial Rededication Ceremony at The Mailbox on 14 Nov 2004. Afterwards he told this story which has been entered by a volunteer.

This is my tribute to the factory workers who kept working in very difficult conditions during the war. A lot is said about the soldiers, sailors and airmen who fought, but the factory workers are the ones that kept them supplied.

I worked for the Aeroplane & Motor Castings (AMAC) foundry in Birmingham. The foundry made aluminium parts for cars, tanks and planes. I started working in the factory at the age of 14, on leaving school, and, barring a spell when I was called up, continued to work there until I retired at 64.

Men would walk to the foundry from Wales and travel down from Scotland or Ireland to get a job there. Their families would follow them and also get work in the factories. That鈥檚 why today, Birmingham has such a mix of people. The Welsh would mainly live in Erdington, 5 or 6 adults to a house at first.

Work in the foundry was very hard. People could be hurt by the machinery. My own mother lost her hand in a steel press. The foundry itself had glass roof that was painted over so the light wouldn鈥檛 show through. In Peace time, we鈥檇 have had the roof off, especially in the summer because of the heat from the furnaces. But in wartime, we had to leave the roof on because the smoke and light escaping from it would have given us away to enemy bombers.

My father was in the Home Guard and I was roped in too as a boy to make the tea. Since I was in a reserved occupation, as a factory worker, I wasn鈥檛 called up until after D-Day.

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