大象传媒

I remember when we were bombed-out. In 1941 I was 12, and living with my parents in a suburb of Birmingham. Most nights we had air raids and had brought our beds downstairs. I was sleeping on a camp bed in the front room (attempting to sleep at least, as it was very noisy with the anti-aircraft guns.) Suddenly there was a shattering roar and a loud explosion--I was under the bed by then. When we had picked ourselves up we realised that most of the windows were smashed, alot of the tiles off the roof and a large hole in the garden. However, the noise was contributed to by my grandmothers pickles. We had a covered verandah at the side of the house and she had made a number of jars of pickled onions, one of the few vegetables you could buy without coupons, and had put them on a shelf in the verandah. When the bomb fell all the jars fell off the shelf, adding to the din.
The ARP wardens arrived quickly to view the crater, and summoned the Home Guard, who were unsure if it was an exploded small bomb or a large unexploded bomb. With fixed bayonets they started poking down the hole, and my father, also an ARP warden (and an old soldier) commented drily, that if there was really a bomb down there, that was the best way to set it off.
It was decided that just in case, we must all be evacuated. That night we went to relativesnearby, and the next day we went out into the country, where we found refuge with two spinster ladies, total strangers, who kindly took us in (three adults a child and a dog) and kept us for a week, until we were allowed home, it having been decided that it had been one of a "stick" of small bombs aimed at the nearby railway branch line into the city.
When we returned home we went into the centre of Birmingham to view the devastation which was considerable. The city suffered greatly, though it is rarely mentioned when bombing is talked about, but, as the centre of an industrial area, it was an obvious target.

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