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Love and War in Worcestershire
Mike Bannister Remembers his Dandelion Days around Cofton and Alvechurch- Not Least What it Was to be Born into a World at War.

EPISODE 1 - LITTLE EDEN

Life in Cofton Hackett, 1936-39, was something of an idyll and our home, at Drachenfels, 7 in Ashmead Drive was, truly, a place of peace. There I was born and grew up for my first ten years, before moving to Gothic Cottages, in Mill Lane Alvechurch. Elsie Marcella, my Mom, provided sweet meals at fixed times, kept us orderly, neat and clean, said, nightly, certain prayers over us, and saw to it that we went to school on time.

We went to Sunday School at St. Michael's & All Angels, to hear Miss Chaffer tell the puzzling tale of “A Green Hill , far away without a city wall.....” All too soon, we graduated, with Derek Harold, and Michael Dance, into the choir, with black cassocks, ruff collars and surplices, of starched white stuff. We hurried to summon the flock, hauling on the twin bell-ropes, pumped the organ bellows, and together, piped the old sweet tunes of the English Hymnal.

Our house was sheltered by a tall hedge of privet. Left of the front window, sprang a dense Fuchsia, with flowers of carmine and blue. It grew, we were told, from a cutting of the very plant that Cardinal Newman himself had brought to Rednal, all the way from Rome. My lifelong love of ‘history’ started here.

At the back, Charles, my father created his own small Eden. There was ‘crazy paving’ - a patio (a word still waiting to be discovered) and a rectangular, cement lined pool, with pond life, crowfoot, newts, tadpoles, dragonflies, and dytiscus beetles. Over these diverse creatures, ruled Jonah, emperor of all fishes; a huge, 5.5lb bronze carp, who sipped earthworms from Charles’ gentle hand on summer evenings. Below the pool, a rockery descended to a small lawn, framed with herbaceous plants, roses, and then a vegetable garden, shaded by a tall willow. Here I was taught to make a seed drill, to sow peas, and later on, for reasons I could not quite grasp, to DIG FOR VICTORY.

What VICTORY was, exactly, came to me slowly over the next 10 years. In ‘39, I was but four years old and it took time for me to realise that I had been born into a nation readying itself for WAR. It is true that I had seen a military parade in Birmingham’s Victoria Square, even being allowed, by the Drum Major himself, to try my hand making thunder from his well worn skins. At weekends, in Cofton Park, squaddies, on manoeuvres, played hiding games with brushwood in their ‘tin hats,’ darting for cover, firing off blank rounds from their Lee Enfield 303’s. Even then it didn’t ‘dawn on me’ that they were practising the arts of war, intent on death or glory.

WAR, AND RUMOURS OF WAR

One day, uncle Bert Muir (size fourteen boots !) came to tea in his khaki uniform, wearing the badge of the Border Regiment, and the parachute insignia. I was thrilled, and resolved to start a collection of regimental cap badges. Later on, a youthful Uncle Stanley Rollason came to visit, wearing the same khaki, but with a different cap badge, advertising Royal Signals. On each occasion, when they said goodbye, there were brave words, and tears in Marcella’s patient eyes.

Then aunty Josephine Rollason, a pillar of the Salvationist Brigade, swept in, full of energy and smiles She smelled sweet, and told good stories. Her ‘uniform’ was amazing, with a round black bonnet, half Hollywood, half chapel. She was the Driver and Commander of a huge and shiny RED SHIELD van, roaring all over the British Isle, with ‘necessaries’ for sale to waiting servicemen, encamped away from home.

Dad sat in his usual chair on his ‘days off’ reading the Telegraph, and telling Mom about happenings in Azerbaijan. Gradually brother Dave and I became aware that something hugely serious was up. By ‘wireless’ Alvar Liddel told solemn news, and then Tommy Handley would come on, and make everyone smile, introducing comic songs about a ‘Mr. Hitler’. Weekday mornings, we made our ways unwillingly to Barnt Green School and later, Waseley Hills, trailing our ‘Gas mask’ cases. There we experienced the rudiments of terror, as meted out by ‘Gaffer’ Lawrence and Mick Munnings, unsmiling ‘Heads of School’.

At home, real life went on. We played cricket against Porrit’s wall, ran errands, to Matty Johnson’s in ‘Nowhere’; went to the dentist in Selly Oak, and as a reward for bravery, were taken to watch the blacksmith forge shoes for the horses by the canal side. At night Elsie Marcella sat with us and said “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon this little child, pity his simplicity, suffer him to come to me.” Sixty years on, I begin to grasp the fears and aspirations she must have carried in her secret heart.

But bravery, and its cousin fortitude, were in the air. We were taught lines to say on special occasions, The Magnificat, and Leisure, by W.H.Davies - ‘What life is this, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare....’ - Then Alfred Edward Housman’s
‘The troubles of our proud and angry dust,
Are from eternity, and shall not fail,
Bear them we can, and if we can we must,
Shoulder the sky my lad, and drink your ale.’

At night we were sent up early, to blacked-out rooms, and there we would tune in the home-made cigar-box ‘Crystal Sets’ Dad made for us. We would tweak the ‘Cat’s Whiskers’ waiting for the voices of ĂŰŃż´ŤĂ˝ London to come clear above the crackling of the aether, and so the Angel of Sleep would come to us, part-way through Monday Night at Eight , World Theatre , Valentine Diall’s The Man in Black, or Henry Hall’s Guest Night. Out of these mists and shadows, I first became acquainted with John Masefield, and with George Du Maurier’s Trilby, with Peer Gynt, and Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great.

THE MISFORTUNES OF WAR

That summer, Charles began major excavations at the foot of the garden. A pit appeared, 5 or 6 foot deep, with vertical sides. The days were rainy and damp. One afternoon, while he was away ‘at work’ in the hospital, I peered over the brink, and was interested to see how many frogs had found their way down there. Dozens of them, green and yellow, immobile, wide-eyed stared back at me. I crawled forward for a better view; and then - catastrophe. I felt myself falling through space, to land upside down and with a jarring thump on cold clay. I was alone and badly shaken, staring, close-range now, at the silent froggy company. I began to moan.

After what seemed like ages, Bert Hickson, came from Number 9, his beloved briar pipe clenched in his jaw. He peered at me awhile, then said, in his Lancashire way, “Eeh ! Sausage, you’re in trouble, wait a while”. I stopped moaning. He vanished, then reappeared, ladder in hand. Soon I was rescued, carted up to the house and put into the bath, to a mixed chorus of comfort and scolding from a distracted Marcella.

Day by day, the Frog Pit was transformed. It became a corrugated steel Anderson Shelter, with a sloping ‘L’ shaped blast-proof entrance, and a soak-away beneath a stout planked floor. There was a brown handled entrance door leading to 3 steps down. Inside were 2 bunk beds, a chair, a chanty (potty), and a box of candles. The walls were painted with deep green paint, intermixed with sawdust for ‘texture’ and to limit condensation. Above, this secret cell was heaped over, with earth and sandbags. What was it for, exactly ? I would soon be left in no doubt.

The bombing of cities and harbours had, by this stage, well and truly begun. Night after night the drone and whistle of aircraft, and missiles, became commonplace things. At the Danillo Cinema in Longbridge and on the wireless, we were educated into the realities of war. On ‘Pathe Pictorial’ newsreels I saw fire consume the East End of London. Whole buildings aflame and falling forward. Once we stood on Cofton Park, and looked across to see Birmingham, our own City, on fire with falling planes, barrage balloons in flames, and tracer bullets cutting through the red smoke-haze. The noise was fearful on every side; pandemonium on the loose. This was not Pathe film, or make believe. It was the real destruction by fire, of the world I was only just getting to know. The whole experience was a living nightmare. The effect of such violence, on the green minds of young people, then as now, seems never to have been worked out.

Heading south from sorties on the industrial heartlands, ‘enemy’ bombers would sometimes discharge their lethal cargoes close to home. One dreadful night after the Air Raid Warning siren had sounded, Dave and I were rushed from our warm beds, down the garden path, to The Shelter. The bunks were made up. Candles were lit, and our sleepy eyes began to adjust to the gloom. Elsie Marcella went back home again to fill the thermos flask, and Charles to collect more cushions.

Sometime after they left us, there was a thundering blast close by. Everything shook, jolted, as if an earthquake, suddenly, had come and gone; for a terrible instant, I re-imagined the burning horror of the Pathe News. Where were they, our Mom and Dad ? Had they burned alive out there ? I wailed. Brother Dave tried to calm me. Then the shelter door swung back, and to our relief, Mom appeared, flask and sandwiches in hand. There was silence and a long delay, then some muffled grumbling in the entrance tunnel. Charles appeared in full Bud Abbot mode. He dropped his bundle and clowned, ruefully, about how the blast had hurled him into his precious flower bed, had squashed his beautiful Delphiniums, and plastered the seat of his best striped pyjamas with thick red mud. He was incensed, ‘UP IN ARMS’ (literally) and ‘THAT B****Y ADOLF’ was to blame !! Out of our confusion, he won some tired giggles. We settled down to a late supper, and waited for the dawn of day.

Church-going to St. Michael’s and All Angels meant adventures, not always theological. At the end of Chestnut Drive, there was a walled garden with a wooden door. A rough path, The Stocken, (We all said ‘Stocking’) lead out from under a ‘spreading’ Chestnut Tree, south along a causeway between the Cofton Pools, known to us choirboys as ‘Big Rezza’ and ‘Little Rezza’. Beside that track, the German bombs had come down in the night, leaving craters and holes with sandy sides for sliding. There we mined, with careless hands, ugly shards of deadly steel shrapnel, which we took for trophies. In that small wilderness, we were free, for an hour or so, to sing and shout, throw stones, play games, take risks, and make small mischief.

In 1942, winter hung on, with deep snow. Our ‘Little Nanny’ Pricilla Rollason (five foot nothing of whirlwind and uncompromising discipline) came to stay. Our dear sister Judith was born on a Monday - ‘Cub night’ - Marcella, whose heart was never strong, had ‘Done her Best’ had lived through an ordeal, and brought a magic gift. Everyone was mightily relieved about this, and happy to be five.

*END OF PART ONE***

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