大象传媒

A FEW REMINISCENCES OF WORLD WAR 2

I was almost 5 when the war was declared so my memories are rather disjointed. My parents and I lived at 8 Coleshill Road, Ward End, Birmingham. My mother ran a ladies dress shop (鈥淔lorette鈥�) at this address and we lived over the shop. (I have a photo of it taken in the 50鈥檚). My father was a clerk at Frederick Smith鈥檚 Brewery in Lichfield Road, Aston.
I went to the Amberley Preparatory School in Coleshill Road where there was an air raid shelter built of brickwork and concrete, mostly below ground, and sufficient to hold the 70 or so pupils. We never used it 鈥渇or real鈥� but, from time to time, we practised going into it and using the emergency escape ladder. We had to put emergency rations in it, and I remember having my glucose tin with cream biscuits (I ate them after the war!) We celebrated various events with a lot of flag waving, very patriotic.
The first air raid that I remember was when a bomb was dropped in the road outside 36 and 38 Coleshill Road (38 was the home of Braggs the bakers). These houses were badly damaged and our shop windows, together with all the other local ones, were blown out.
My father had an air raid shelter built of 9 inch brick walls with a 6 inch reinforced concrete roof, mostly below ground, and covered with a few tons of sand. When the sirens started (the local one was on the Beaufort cinema, 3 doors away) my bedroom light would go on and I would be picked out of bed and carried down the garden to the shelter. I remember the first time as if it was yesterday! When the raids were frequent we would not go to bed but stay downstairs and wait for the inevitable siren.
My father was too old to be called up (he had served in the first world war as a signaller in the Oxford and Buckinghamshire regiment) so he volunteered as a special constable at Washwood Heath police station. He had a car and used it to drive the inspector (Bill Sutton) around. He would be phoned when required, always at night, and was often out for hours. My mother was rather deaf and, when a raid had started, he would contrive to be round our way so that he could make sure that we were down the shelter (I can hear his footsteps coming down the shelter steps even now). He also did fire-watching at the Beaufort cinema with the other local shopkeepers. In the basement they had a snooker table for relaxation when nothing was happening. After the war, they built a hut in the back garden of the greengrocer鈥檚 shop, installed the snooker table, and started the ex-fire fighters billiards and social club.
When the raids were very heavy my mother and I were evacuated to Offenham (near Evesham). After a couple of brief stays, we spent most of 6 months with some people who became very close friends. I guess that this was early 1941. We had a young assistant looking after the shop and my father, who stayed there, visited us when he could get some petrol. Eventually we came back. Later the raids started again and sometimes we would spend the night with some people in Bassett鈥檚 Pole, coming home early in the morning. We came back one morning and there had been a heavy raid. All the shop windows were out again, there seemed to be debris everywhere, and telephone wires, tram wires etc were all down. My grandfather lived at 821 Washwood Heath Road. He was very old and refused to go down the shelter (鈥渢he Lord will look after me鈥� or 鈥渋f you didn鈥檛 have such heavy suppers, you wouldn鈥檛 have bad dreams鈥�). A bomb dropped opposite his house and a paving slab or kerb dropped through the roof and landed by the side of his bed. He was covered in plaster and didn鈥檛 get hurt. Our shop windows were then boarded up with plywood leaving a couple of small glazed areas behind which mother could display a hat on a stand!
Possibly our nearest escape was from a bomb dropped in the field behind our house, belonging to the Beaufort cinema. It was about 100 yards from our air raid shelter. Fortunately it didn鈥檛 explode. I can remember sitting in our house and watching men taking it away. The hole was very deep.

One thing that never seems to be mentioned is very clear in my memory. Across Coleshill Road there were tank traps, depressions cut at intervals, across the carriageway, in which horizontal steel bars were fixed. On the footway there were a number of large concrete cylinders, wedged upright, so that they could be rolled into the carriageway.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.