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Kay’s Story: Night Duty in Birmingham

In the past few weeks the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has been celebrating and commemorating various events which took place during World War II. The bombing, fire fighting and mass movements of the people at the sound of the air raid warnings; the sadness of parents having to say goodbye to their children who were being evacuated to the country; the queuing for anything that became available in addition to the rationed food and the uncertainty of whether or not people would find their homes still standing on leaving the air raid shelter, having in most cases spent the whole night there.

London was well and truly targeted, but so were other cities: Birmingham, Coventry and many more. I’m thinking mainly of our second city as I spent all the war years there. Although we are all very proud of the Forces and show our gratitude in many different ways, like November 11th for instance, I notice there is so little mention of the Home Front. ARP Wardens, Air Raid Wardens, Fire Watchers, voluntary helpers in the hospitals, munitions workers, miners working longer hours, the Land Army, the Fire Services who put their own lives at risk during the air raids, and people like me.

I changed my plans during my nursing career to train as a midwife. We were told that we would be desperately needed after the War, when the young men, returning home, would be hopefully getting back to a normal family life. So medical students and pupil midwives, as we were then called, certainly did their bit and often in dangerous situations. I will recount just one of many nights’ experiences.

I was in Part II of my training, which involved working on the District, and was allocated to the district of Hockley, which was noted as the slum area of Birmingham. Most of the houses were back-to-back and extremely difficult to find, and there was just one antenatal clinic each week, which was held in a temporary building. Most of the women would not bother to attend, so invariably we had never met them before the birth and had no idea what kind of person or home we would find when duty called.

I had been out most of the previous night and was hoping to get a full night’s sleep. There were two of us allocated to the Hockley district, so we took it in turns for the night calls, and as it was my colleague’s turn I snuggled down with that thought in mind. Sure enough, the doorbell rang and my mate was the one to answer the call to duty. Only half an hour later there was another call and once again I was about to lose another night’s sleep. ‘Never mind,’ I thought, ‘if there’s another call the Sister in Charge will have to go out for a change!’

As soon as I had shut the door behind me, the air raid warning sounded. There were no streetlights and one had to rely on one’s torch and even that had to be covered so that it did not throw a beam of light. I began to run so that when I reached the area the house was in, I could give myself a bit of time to seek out the number I needed.

The address I had been given was the name of a street, off the name of another street, then the number of a house at the back of another house, behind yet another! By this time I could hear the thud of approaching aircraft and, although I was familiar with the sound and the consequences, there was always the fear of not knowing which area they were heading for, and wondering where the bombs were going to drop when the screaming sound they made stopped.

No sooner had the warning siren stopped, there would be someone about, and as I was trying to memorise the numbers on my slip of paper, lit only by a poor torch light, a policeman came up to me and asked me what number I was looking for. He smiled and just said ‘Follow me’. I would never have found it in the dark. It was difficult enough in the daylight when I was making my daytime visits.

The air raid started in minutes and then my real problems began. I knew there wouldn’t be any gas in the meter when I reached the house, so I always carried two penny pieces in my pocket, but I also had to find the water pump which was in the middle of a courtyard. There was only a young girl in the house. The elderly man who had come for me had not waited and was nowhere to be seen. When I’d asked him to wait, he’d said there was going to be a raid and he wasn’t going to get caught in it!

He was right but that was no help to me. I gradually found my way to the tap and, as I was feeling for the pump, there was a massive scream of falling bombs. It was just as though someone had said ‘Here she is. Get her’. I stood petrified because the screams sounded as though they were heading straight for me. Then after a sequence of explosions I realised they weren’t for me. As I viewed the burning buildings on the way home I realised they’d been too close for comfort!

I wanted to burst out crying but I had a job to do, so filled the lidless kettle and an old saucepan, which had a mixture of burnt fat and kitchen waste round the outside of it. I cautiously made my way back to the house and, under the most appalling conditions, with only half a candle for light, a drawer for a cot, and one hell of an air raid as background, I delivered a lovely baby girl, whose daddy was in the army.

As I walked back to my digs, daylight was breaking and the all clear siren had sounded. The fires were still burning and the fire officers were still working. Onlookers were viewing the damage done by the air raid but most of the raid had been targeted on the centre of the city, where some of the hotels and large shops had been hit. On that particular night Snow Hill Station received some damage but the trains still ran.

Hockley is now the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, a very different picture now, but hidden beneath the newly bulldozed earth lie stories worth remembering and stories best forgotten.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Graham Brown of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action desk on behalf of Kathleen Joyce Applin and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

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