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This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Maggie Smith from WM CSV Action Desk on behalf of Jacqueline Wilde and has been added to the site with her permission. Jacqueline Wilde fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

Another time we had a very heavy raid at night and when I came off duty I couldn鈥檛 get back home, the buses had stopped running and they couldn鈥檛 spare anyone to transport us home. So we had to stay in the building, they had made the top floor into a canteen and it had got little rooms with beds in so if you had done a long spell of duty and couldn鈥檛 get back home you could always go there and have a rest or a sleep for a few hours. But this particular night it was very heavy and all the fire engines on our stations were occupied with fires in the city centres and around and we had to send to outside Birmingham for the fire engines to come and stand in. Different places in the country which weren鈥檛 bombed if they got fire engines they鈥檇 send them in to the cities that were under fire and they鈥檇 stand in at the stations so that no fire station was completely empty. That meant that they鈥檇 always got a machine in the event that if any new fires started or the crews could go help relieve the firemen which had been fighting a fire or damping down after the fire.

Probably been there for eight or ten hours without a break so these fire engines were coming in from outside and not a lot of the drivers knew the ways to the different fire stations so I was sent out to stand at the top of Great Charles Street and direct the traffic, its not traffic like you see these days with lots of cars because cars weren鈥檛 allowed as soon as the air raid warnings went off it was only the official vehicles that were allowed the fire engines the ambulances and vehicles like that. So I had to go and stand there and when I saw the fire engines coming in I had to direct them to the different divisions and fire stations or wherever they should go. On the outskirts of each city in the different main roads they had the fire station that had a chequered board which looked like a draughts board black and white and this chequered board was a rallying point so that fire engines coming in from outside Birmingham would stop there to get their orders on where to go then they would send them into the city centre. I was directing the traffic so that when they got into the city centre I could send them on the different fire stations where they were needed. I was only seventeen or eighteen at the time and it was quite exciting directing traffic. I鈥檇 got my helmet on and my uniform on and just hoping that there wouldn鈥檛 be a direct hit or a bomb come down near me while I was there. Anyhow I stood there for about three hours doing this and then went back to headquarters and took a couple of hours sleep until the raid eased off or somebody was going home my way.

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