大象传媒

19 鈥� Susan Buggins鈥� War Memories (born 1922):

鈥淲e had little Kelly lamps, we had oil lamps in the house and little Kelly lamps about four inches high which we took to bed. I haven鈥檛 lived in (Welford) village since 1940, since I went in the army, I鈥檝e lived in Stratford since. I was lucky, I was drafted into ack-ack, and I manned a searchlight in London through the blitz right up to the end of that year. But I was lucky I was near London. On your rare night off you buzzed off into London and went to the theatre, or something jolly like that.

(Back in Stratford) the fever hospital was a very fearsome place, well back off the Birmingham Road where you went if you had scarlet fever or any of the other fevers, children and adults. You were transported in a special vehicle from the fever hospital, not an ordinary ambulance. When I first remember it it was of course a cart and when we went by we were always told not to breathe as we went past it, although it was way back from the road, in case you inhaled one of the germs; it was a very terrible place to be sent, but I鈥檓 quite sure, it did a marvellous job, people didn鈥檛 die there very often, they came away much better.

And the nursing home was where the Civic Hall now is; in the Wartime it was turned into a maternity home, and poor haggard ladies came to it from Coventry, Birmingham, London, anywhere else 鈥� Liverpool I think - that was bombed, and they came there for a few weeks鈥� rest to have their babies, and oh dear, the poor things, their faces were so drawn with pregnancy and fear and lack of food and comfort. I was very young then, but I learnt to recognize them, and I鈥檝e never forgotten the look on the face of a woman expecting a child, I can still see it now, I can tell by looking at someone whether she鈥檚 pregnant, but now of course they鈥檙e all lovely and blooming, and not all drawn and terrified as those poor things were. (They were brought to this nursing home to be) away from the bombing 鈥� the bombing in Birmingham, and for a while in Coventry,was horrendous. There was a theory you know that the theatre was reserved for Parliament to move into, in case Parliament was bombed, it was a well-known local fact, but there was nothing here to be bombed There was a bomb, one bomb somewhere, in Wilmcote I think. It was only a stray bomb, aimed at Birmingham or Coventry, that came down.
There was light industry, Josephs on Birmingham Road was turned over from food canning and aluminium products into war work 鈥� aircraft parts and small parts for war machines, ammunition, but nothing big enough to send out on a bombing raid.鈥�

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