蜜芽传媒

Birmingham at War. By Barbara Joyce Earp

It was 1939 and I was a 16 year old grammar school girl living in Metchley Lane Harbourne. I had two brothers who had been served their papers in the post that morning. My brother Laurence was 18 and Bob was 19. Lol had a terrific sense of adventure and had never been out of Birmingham before so when war started he decided to go into the Royal Navy. I remember him drinking Ansell鈥檚 and Mitchell and Butler鈥檚 beer with all the family talking about the war and wanting to go to places all over Europe with the Navy to fight in the war. I don鈥檛 think he had much idea about what war meant, he was 18 and care free and knew nothing of life yet alone the world or war. Bob was very clever with cars and decided to go into REME in tanks. I was sad to see both my brothers leave the house with their bags of things and sandwiches mom had made them for the journey to their receiving training barracks. We walked to the top shops with them and they got on a number 11 Outer Circle bus to Harbourne (to get on another bus to the city and get on trains at New Street and go their different ways) we wept as we waved goodbye not knowing if either would ever return but wishing with tears they would when it was all over.
Lol went into the tank landing craft after training at Portsmouth and all the war he ferried men and machines from ships to shore and returned to the ship with wounded, then back again to shore. He returned home on leave some times and told us they were constantly shelled, bombed by Stukas and machine gunned. Bob went to Alemaine with the Desert Rats.

I was now working as an accountant at Lewis鈥檚 bank in the day, in the Birmingham city centre. The Birmingham City Corporation buses and trams only ran in the day and the city was busy with srowds of people. I caught the 11 to Harbourne and waited for a city bus opposite the Duke of York pub. Life was always hectic and busy. Birmingham had become a hub of industry making ammunitions, vehicles and aeroplanes for the war effort. Everyone had to do two jobs and I worked in an ammunitions factory in New Street in the late afternoon and early evenings. Later I changed that and went to work in a cinema at Bearwood which I liked better. One night I got locked in by the manager and my boyfriend (John) had to get the manager back to let me out.

The whole city had been transformed with barrage balloon defences and wires elevated up into the clouds tethering them. The island down the road by the Golden Cross pub got bombed one night and Mrs Swan next door was Air Raid Patrol and they carried buckets of sand to dowse the incendiary before it drew any unwanted attention from jerry planes targeting the light. They were always looking to bomb industrial works like the Austin Motor Company at Longbridge 6 miles away but that had been camouflaged to blend in with the Lickey Hills. They also had made a factory of tunnels underground and turned out heavy lorry and aeroplane parts throughout the war. Even though it is a target of several square miles on the main railway line I can鈥檛 remember it being bombed.

I regularly came home and had diner with mom and dad of sorts. The rations were 2 oz butter, 1oz tea and 2 oz meat a week. Sometimes mom sent me with a brown paper bag to the top shops to queue for what was going, sometimes they had bananas which was amazing in a war as they came from the West Indies but more usually you waited in line for more mundane: King Edward potatoes, onions, carrots, and parsnips. Dad did an allotment up Metchley Lane and this provided extra food. Mom also had chickens in the back yard for our own eggs and an occasional chicken was killed. The feathers were plucked after boiling water was poured on the bird to make pulling them out easier, they always went every where. Mom was a good cook and she鈥檇 make even the simplest meat into a delicious meal. They were days when we talked over a diner about the war but somehow we all had a sense of unity and we were proud of what we did. I read about the war of course in the B鈥檋am Mail but it was censored news and only had the advances and victories in. I got to know the truth about war when Bob, Lol or Stan returned for short leaves. I knew I could not stand going through what they had to put up with. Bob fought through that Alemaine desert war campaign and when it ended he eventually came home on 14 days leave. He was always a big man but had lost weight and was tanned deep brown. I remember he loved to drink the beer as he said they sometimes never had enough water and had to drink their own urine in the desert. After that leave they sent him into D-Day landings. I hated seeing them go and loved the times when we were back together.

Life went on in Brum. I gave blood at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (the hospital was built in 1937). I walked there about 戮 of a mile and back, people walked more those days although the 21 bus went that way; it was more pleasant in the summer to walk after a day in the hot city. Steam trains ran under the bridge I walked over on the way there, on the B鈥檋am to Bristol line and the south of England laden with tanks, Lorries, bombs and ammunition and troops. They thundered along at 60 miles an hour pulled by 100 ton engines billowing steam and smoke. On through Selly Oak and passed Cadbury鈥檚 chocolate factory they went to delivery their lethal cargoes in lands beyond our shores. You could smell the war and hear it as the train hurtled on through. I gave blood more often than I should but nothing was said. My mother told me it was bad for me but I never listened to her. I knew she meant well for me but I felt a need to donate. Troops had terrific injuries after Dunkirk and later D-Day and they needed my blood and I gave it willingly. I was doing my bit for the young men of my age who had been severely injured in the war. I realised what they went through and felt I had to do something for them. I often felt feint after when I walked home but had a valuable cuppa tea at home before it got dark.

We dreaded the nights as all the days鈥� traffic and buses disappeared. No lights were allowed and the windows were blacked out to stop jerry bombers getting a glimpse of light. Cars could go out without lights but it was lethal to try and few did. The buses and trams stopped before it got dark and returned to depots at Selly Oak and Cotteridge in the evenings in their hundreds to line up while tired drivers went home. One night we went out as neighbours saw a glow in the east sky- we know it was a big bombing raid somewhere and we later got to know it was Coventry on fire after one of the biggest incendiary bombing raids. London got most of it but Ports and cities were targeted too. This made us all feel for the people killed and families in grief. Several people had relatives in Coventry and they set about contacting them. Some had bad news and a telegram arrived. You dreaded the telegram- it was always bad news of the coffin type. Coventry was an industrial city making machine tools that kept the factories churning out war production. I worked with resolution after that even though we had little food to eat and few rewards. I was often glad I had two brothers fighting them Germans on their own territory. My sister (Doll for Dorothy) had married Stan Needham who was an officer now in the toe of Italy. I wondered how they were all getting by in the terrible conditions under front line fire. I guessed things were worse for them than us back in Brum.

Bob was stuck in France and was injured but not fatally. He鈥檇 seen his regiment decimated by crack Panzer Tiger Tanks. His best mates head had blown off in front of him when a shell burst. He deserted and made his way to Calais with threads for shoes and hardly any clothes. A sailor got him on board a ship to Southampton. At a Salvation Army Hostel at midnight he and another heard the MP鈥檚 come to look for deserters. They went down the drain pipe and saw the keys in the jeep. They rolled it down a hill and started it when they could be heard. He drove the other soldier to Bristol and then came up to Birmingham leaving the jeep outside the Man in the Moon pub at West Heath. It was in the B鈥檋am Mail newspaper for weeks, 鈥淲ill the owner of jeep KV 784 please collect it鈥�. Bob lived in the attic of several houses until the war finished and he lived by making dolls houses and clocks from bits of materials all his sisters got for him. We were regularly raided now by the British military police but they never found him. One day bob had gone to Marg鈥檚 house (one of my sisters) in City Road Bearwood and found them out, so he got in and moved all the furniture upstairs and left. When Marg returned with her husband Fred (a draughtsman) they thought they鈥檇 been burgled and called the police. On arrival the policeman went upstairs and found the furniture there- of course Marg then twigged who鈥檇 done this but could not say. She said someone had played a trick on them and the police went away peeved at being called. Marg and Fred were furious. Such mischief kept Bob鈥檚 spirits up.When Lol and my sisters husband Stan returned they got on alright with Bob which was surprising really in the circumstances. Bob got uptight and angry when he saw their medals. He was entitled to the Alemaine medals but the army would not give him them. After the war he turned himself in Steel House Lane Police Station. He did 6 months in a military glass house prison. Lol became a carpenter and Bob became a Radio and TV Engineer and lived here with us for some time until Bob later married.

In 1944 I married and had my first child in October the sixth, 1945. The war was over then but rationing went on until 1952 for some things like sweets. Dolly and Stan moved to Franklin Road and kept pigs and chickens there. One day a pig got out and ran down the entry and from there all the way to Cotteridge chased by Stan and Bob. The pig ran into the ladies lavatory and women poured out screaming. They eventually collared the pig and got it into a truck and took it home. There was always a half of a home cured pig in muslin hanging from the ceiling of the landing at moms in Metchley Lane. It took people a long time after the war to get back to normal.

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