大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Jabulani Chwaula from WM CSV Action Desk on behalf of Arthur Musson and has been added to the site with his permission. Arthur Musson fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

Soon after moving to Hercules, I joined their home Guard unit which was D Company, part of the 25th Warwickshire, Birmingham Battalion Home Guard. This was a factory based unit in Aston.

Initially, I was in the first aid section, but an intelligence section was being formed and a number of us transferred.

At Hercules, we were working five and half days a week, finishing at 1:00PM on Saturdays.
This was less than at the B.S.A, but well in excess of 50 hours, and with home guard duties, it came into at least mid 60 hours. We only had 30 minutes break for lunch, so we used to wait for the exit gate to open and run up to the British Restaurant near Tower road for our meal. The main course was about 5p and the pudding 2p. After finishing our meal, we would run back to the factory and usually make it within the time span. No wonder we are fitter than many youth of today.

We were doing one night on guard every 8 days. This meant doing a full day鈥檚 work, followed by a night up with little sleep, and then another day鈥檚 work.

On duty we took it in turns doing 2 hours on, where we had to go round the factory checking that everything was in order, and that there were no intruders or saboteurs about. Fortunately we did not find any. We then had 4 hours off duty to get some sleep, if you were lucky.

Each week we normally had one evening of lectures and a training exercise on most Sunday mornings. I seemed to be continually tired during this period.

If an air raid took place when we were on duty, two of us would go to a vantage point on the roof where there was a brick built look out point, from where there was a good view of the surrounding area. If the air raid was developing locally, we would sound the sirens to get the workers to the shelters. When it was quieter again the sirens would be sounded again to get production going once more.

Most Factories had a similar policy using the Home Guard or fire watchers to evacuate workers when danger was imminent.

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