大象传媒

This story has been sybmitted to the Peoples War website by Irene Harkins and Angela Triggs of 大象传媒 Cov and Warks Action desk on behalf of the family of the late Ernie Smith's family who are aware of the conditions of the site.

Round about June 1939 I decided that a little knowledge of first aid would be useful as we had had one or two accidents at the gym during our judo session. One of our lads was attending the Holbrooks Division of St Johns Ambulance and I went along with him to find out what it was all about. After about 7 or 8 weeks of wading through the little black book, the officer in charge told me of an exam being held, and suggested that I go along and try my luck. I went along all primed up for anyting. After hanging around for what felt likes hours I finally went into the doctor's room and was asked 3 or 4 questions that I thought were pretty elementary, and then I was sent into the practical room.

I was asked, of all things, to fix up a fractured finger ! What a let down. I's been practicing femurs, kneecaps, etc. I then formed a corner of a stretcher squad for a brief exercise and was told that it was over. Some 3 weeks later I was told that I'd passed the exam and was duly qualified to render first aid to injured persons. "pity the injured person" thinks I. However, I thought it was worthwhile to carry on and get some experience. To this end I signed up and as a private member of St John Ambulance Brigade.

By now war clouds wer gathering and this country found itself at war with Germany. The ARP as it was then called suddently woke up and the St John's were authomatically drafted into the First Aid section, to flrm the nucleus of first aid parties. I found myself as a 'leader' and 'instructor' of a squad ! There I was a totally inexperienced and untried member of only a few weeks, expected to set an example. However, we got down to work and all the textbook stuff was translated into what were most unexpected conditions. How wrong the textbooks were when it turned out. To practice doing fractures up with splints in the open is one thing, but to do the same under a demolished and dangerous building was quite another. The plints went by the board and the book with them ! First Aid had to be rough but efficient.

So things went on in what we called the 'phoney war' - bombs did not arrive and people started toget apathetic. We'd practice getting Dr Turner off a cupboard 7 foot up, without dropping him - just imagine a 14 stone bloke being rescued from such a position. There were 4 of us rolling him onto a stretcher without dropping him. What faith he had in us.

One night at about half past midnight the sirens s sounded and everyone was jolted back to reality. Nothing was dropped that night but soon afterwards one came down on Cannon Park Road. Nobody was injured in that one but a few hours later a stick of bombs fell around Wallace Road area and we our first taste of first aid under 'raid' conditions. A few people lost their lives that night and 15 - 20 people injured.

We were finding bodies lying around and s copper asked me if it was a sling I was carrying. I think perhaps he thiought we were looting or something. In fact, I found a child's head and when he saw it he promptly flaked out !

Rubble everywhere, the particular smell of demolished buildings, gas mains flaring away and burst water mains shooting water all over us trying to extricate a victim buried under the remains of their home. We found him eventually, dead. We couldn't see why at the time but a later mortuary examination revealed that a piece of furniture timber about 18 inches by 2 inches tapering to a point, had penetrated his body at the hip and went through the opposite shoulder. We also found a chappie sitting by a wall moaning to himself. When we spoke to him he copmplained that his left hand was cold. He had no left hand - he had no left arm. It had gone from the shoulder, and what surpirised me was that there wasn't much bleeding. The blood vessels had curled up from shock.

Thus I was thrown in at the deep end so to speak. What we didn't know we damned well learned. Fast. After a time we beganto have short raids, mainly at night, but also some daytime. It was then realised thatwe coild not go on working all day at our jobs and be up all night on first-aid. So, we organised into 2 sections. Half us of had to report on odd dates, and half of us on even dates. I was an even date, so I could please myelf if I reported on uneven dates unless the siren went - in which case everyone was on standby until it wasrealised that 'Jerry' was going eslewhere ! We could hear him going Bruummm, Bruummm overhead and the whole area was quiet - no A/A guns, no searchlights, and a very strict blackout. Everyone pretending we were not there and hoping 'Jerry' would keep on going. One night - it was an odd date - and I got down to sleep with my head under the table and went fast off only to wake up with a start at the sound of sirens. I sat up and then listened and realised it was the ;all clear' I could hear - I'd slept right through the alert - so I went back to sleep. it was a long time before I was allowed to forget the night I was A.W.O.L. !!

At about this time brick shelters wer being built in streetsand there was always somebody running into a pile of bricks thatweren't there in the morning, but were there when they came home in the dark. Doctor Turner was such a victim. Hit a pile on his motorbike and knocked himself out cold, and was out of action for over a week. To meet this sort of callout we formed what we called a half squad that was 2 first aiders whose job would be to collect street casualities.Usually I was the first to report in on a night. I always tried to be on the half-squad as you were usually busy and it was experience. If there were no raid calls you usally had some work to do. On one call out the half-squad casually remarked that the victim needed no treatment and was only in shock. We learned later that the poor chap had died from shock. A grim reminder never to underestimate this condition to always expect it to be present. Hillfields became known as 'Hellfire Corner' on account of the pasting it received being close to the Ordnance Depot.

This brings to mind a rather funny incident that occurred at the top of Freehold Street. We had gone up therer to collect some casualities and were looking for a 'bod' the wardens reckoned should be about. The canal runds across the top of the street and we were on the towpath, the ordnance works being on the otyher side - when were challenged by the Home Guard. The dialogue went something like this :- 'Halt, who goes there ' Me 'Civil Defence first aid party looking for casualty' HG 'Advance and be recognised' me @how the hell can we you silly beggar, we're accross the canal over the other side' Just then the Head Warden appeared on the scene apparently having met these Home Guards before and 'Put your pop-guns down and let us do your job' says he.

There was an Irish labourer chap who's pet way of dealing with incdeniary bombs - those small things designed to start fires - by smashing them to the ground with his sledgehammer. All went well until he came up against one with an added explosive device designed to keep people away til the fire took hold. The explosive charge wasn't very great but it went off just as he was swinging the hammer. The sheer surprise rather than the blast threw him off his feet, dropping the hammer on his foot. He jumped him shouting 'Ah, like to bite do you ?' them promptly flattened the the bomb. he was brought in to have 2 crushed toes attended to.

We had to train in full gas-kit and it was murder ! Imagine wearing full waterproof clothing, gas-mask, tin hat and carrying a stretcher through an air-lock (a minimal sized compartment that was suposed to keep the first aid post from being contaminated). What a hope ! On one occasion I was an utside man (on call-out to fetch casualities in) and we got into the air-lock and the door was shut behind us, the innder door jammed and we were stick between the 2 doors - sweating pints, unable to converse and ready to faint from the heat. It had to be summertime of course and just to be having to practice in full gear! Some amazing thisngs happened. For instance, a man was reported missing from his home in Weston Street after a bomb incident. He was eventually found on the roof of the Swanswell Pub 200 yards away. He was dead of course. How he got there nobody knew.

Another time we weer checking a demolished house virtually flattened except for the chimney breast and on the mantle piece of the bedroom was a small clock sedately ticking away as if nothing had happened. Blasts did some strange things. One casualty was stripped naked of his clothing yards from where the bomb exploded. Not a mark on him but quite dead though.The blast caused an implosion sucking the air from his lungs which collapsed.

On one of the earlier raids we were sent to Foleshill Road and collected 4 casualities. I sent them back to the ambulance while we checked for further people. on some open gound there was a large water tank lying on its side. we reached it just as a stick of bombs came whilstling down and we dived under the tank for cover. The bombs stradded the areas - one landing some yards the other side of the tan. The blast rolled the tankover onto its top with us trapped inside it. Though we yelled nobody heard us cos of the din around us and eventually we had jammed some bricks under one side and tunnelled our way out using our sheath knives - none the worse for the experience but coutning another near miss !

Another time when we in GHodiva Street we were bringing a loaded stretcher through one of the covered entries. 'Jerry' was overhead and the A/A guns blasting away. This meant that shell shrapnel and clattering slates were bouncing off the road. We stayed under cover for a bit and then went to load the stretcher in the ambulance (these were commandeered vans fitted with racks to carry 4 stretchers). When we got there we saw a hole through the roof and the bottom of the ambulance, and looking through we could see an ambedded shell nose cone in the road. The bottom stretcher would have been the one we would have loaded had we not waited , and the 'bod' would have had a hole though his middle' Talking of shrapnel, I remember the Home Guard had a battery of rockets in memorial Park, with small H/E heads. I believe about 100 of these were set off in rapid succession and timed to explose at different heights. They were supposed to create a cubic mile of blast and any overhead aircraft in that cubic mile would theoretically be shattered. I never heard of any successes, but what went up must come down, and the metal tubes, which were the body of the rocket, would come clattering to earth making a terrific noise. The barrage was used a number of times - once when when we were not very far away. They made such a roar going up that we thought it was a 1,000 pounder and we dived for cover ! Another of 'Jerry's' tricks was their whistling bombs. Shrieking bombs would be a better word. The welded tubes to the bomb fins and the wind thriugh these tubes as they hurtled to earth made a very high-pitched scream.

One night I was up in Cambridge Street and a bomb had taken the fronts off several houses, and the upstairs floors, ceilings and roofs were all sloping down to the street. In one house there were 2 girls under the stairs, their mother on the stairs and their father in what had been the front room. The mother was dead. The older girl was uninjured, but the younger girl had 3 fractures of the legs. We moved bricks and stuff away to make a hole and eased the older girl out. Then I crawled in and securely fixed the damaged legs of the younger to a fence paling wrapped in some curtaining and we inched her out. 3 months latershe and her sisters came to the post one evening to thank the men who'd rescued them. The father, trapped by the legs, was between the gas meter and an upturned piano. It took us hours to get him out only to have him die, poor man, of shock.

We were always coming up against D/A's (unexploded bombs). They were usually dropped along with the others that blew up in a ration of 1 : 6. They had the effect of holding up traffic and production, and we becamwe quite blase about tending to ignore them - until you had one suddenly go off too close for comfort.

My closest encounter was one day when Dr Turner asked for volunteers to bring a maternity case who'd gone into early labour. A little cockney bloke called Bill and I were on half-squad and off we went to Gas Street. We eere told the lady was in an Andersen Shelter and when we got there we heard tiny noises and realised that the niper had arrived before we did. Just as we were getting her out and onto a stretcher she realised that her handbag with ration cards etc was still in the shelter. Bill popped back for them and I asked where the D/A's were - to be told that one of them was right by the shelter. It went off a half hour after we left - too close for comfort !

There was one warden who can probably claim to be the only person to be hit on the head by a bomb and live to tell the tale ! He was standing in a shop doorway when 'Jerry' dropped a shower of small high explosives (H/E's) and one of them came slanting down, glanced off the wall, glanced off the front of the warden's tin hat, knocking him back through the shop doorway, lanfded on the pavement and blew up shattering all the windows around. The warden got a sore head plus a bit of concussion but otherwise was OK.

Well, so to the Blitz ...... see Ernie's personal recollections - part two

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