A brush with death

With 2015 being 70 years since the end of the Second World War, this month sees a particularly poignant anniversary - that of the last Nazi bomb attack responsible for civilian deaths. On 27th March 1945 a V2 rocket (the world's first guided ballistic missile) hit London's East End, killing 135 people, the second worst V2 strike on London, in terms of lives lost. One final V2 would fall later that day in Orpington, Kent killing one person.

London, of course, had already suffered the horrifying effects of mass incendiary bombs at the start of the infamous 'Blitz' (a word derived from the German for 'lightning war') and many other British cities would be targeted, including Coventry, a city not so far from Wednesfield, near Wolverhampton where my mother lived with her family during the war.

The devastation in Coventry in 1940

Although bombing raids on Wolverhampton were nowhere as frequent as in Coventry and Birmingham, the risk was considered great enough to install anti-aircraft guns on the edge of the city after the horrific and infamous attack on Coventry in November 1940, and provision had already been made for air-raid shelters.

My mum used to talk about the warning sirens and the drills at school, diving under their desks and the carrying of gas masks. Under the family's house in Wednesfield was a cellar – a small, damp and dingy space at the bottom of a flight of brick steps which ran underneath the stairs – which served as their own air-raid shelter. But on the day disaster struck, no one was using it.

Why Mum and the family were not in the cellar at the time isn't clear. As Wolverhampton appeared

My mum (right) and her sister

not to be a target in the same way as neighbouring cities, perhaps the adults had become jaded about disrupting their sleep to sit in a cold hole in the ground for no apparent benefit.

But whatever the reason, at some point in the evening, with Mum fast asleep in bed and the adults still downstairs, the house took a hit from a rogue incendiary bomb.

My grandmother, Wyn, rushed upstairs into my mum's bedroom which was at the back of the house above the living room. The bomb had come through the roof and landed at the bottom of Mum's bed, setting the floor alight. Having pulled Mum out of bed, Gran dragged the heavy feather mattress on to the burning floor-boards to smother the flames before scooping Mum up and carrying her downstairs.



Mum's wartime ID card

The fire would eventually burn its way through to the ground floor and land on the piano below but not before Gran was able to bustle Mum into the kitchen at the end of a corridor to the rear of the house. She dumped her on a chair and wrapped her in the old mac used for visiting the outside privy in the rain.

By now Mum could hear shouting as help arrived and very quickly the fire was extinguished before it could take hold, aided, no doubt, by Gran's quick thinking with the feather bed. Another house in the street had been similarly attacked and the assumption was that a German bomber had jettisoned what was left of its load as it headed for home.

As children, my sister and I loved to hear this story, particularly when visiting my Gran's house, as the heart-shaped repair in the plaster where the bomb had come through the ceiling was still clearly visible.

Mum said that the overwhelming memory of that night was shivering at the unwelcome chill of the cold mac Gran had draped around her to keep her warm, as she sat in the kitchen in her nightdress. But I'm sure, rather than the mac, it was the shock of the incident which caused her to shiver!

 

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An excellent and detailed account can be found of Coventry's blitz (including other aspects of the city's history) on the Historic Coventry website.

Images of the London Blitz,  "Germany's Campaign of Terror over London", can be viewed on the All Day.com website.

 

 

 

Dairy of a 14 year-old, 1948

Reading Virginia Nicholson's, Millions Like Us, (see my other blog, Engage Write Brain), about life in WW2 and the years immediately afterwards, prompted me to look out my mum's teenage diaries of 1948-1952.

A sample page of Mum's diary.

Although they don't have the detail of a journal, being only a small pocket diary, the brief entries still manage to give a flavour of life for a fourteen-year-old at that time.

My mum, Patricia Barton, aged 14

One February entry in 1948 reads: ...went with mom and dad to old folks concert where mom sang and dad played piano. My grandmother, Wyn, had been a professional singer before the war (there's more about her on my post, Strictly Music Hall) and 'Dad' is my mother's step-father, Bill Garland, a semi-professional piano player whom my gran married in 1946.

Other entries which caught my eye were:

• Went to pictures tonight to see 'West of the Pecos' and 'If you knew Susie'. It was smashing. The list of films she saw is impressive. She went to the cinema virtually every week, sometimes twice. I recognised one favourite amongst the many, Random Harvest, which we watched with her years later on many occasion. Based on James Hilton's novel of the same name, it tells the story of 'Smithy' (played by Ronald Coleman) who is suffering amnesia after being shell-shocked in WW1. He begins a new life by marrying Paula (Greer Garson) until one day while visiting the city he's knocked over in the street. His memory is restored but in doing so, he forgets everything about his new wife and baby waiting at home. A tear-jerker which my gran loved, writing to the BBC regularly when we were children, begging them to screen it on TV.

• Tonight mom had a quarrel with Grandpa. Mum, her sister and my gran had lived with my great-grandparents since the start of the war. There's nothing to say what the quarrel was about but a regular argument during wartime concerned Grandpa's habit of going into the yard to light his pipe during the black-out. The women were convinced the German bombers would see the light and that they'd be targeted. Eventually the worst happened and an incendiary was dropped on their house, but not, as far as I'm aware, while he was lighting up!

• 14th March 1949. CLOTHES COUPON END TONIGHT. Clearly written with feeling as it's recorded in capital letters!

• 1950. I visited London with the guides from school. We went for a week. The photo was taken in Trafalgar Square. On the back are listed the names of the guides, though sadly no surnames. Where are you - Miss Blanks, Miss Richards, Pauline, Brenda, Barbara, Mary, Vera, Joyce B, Joyce N, Irene and Edna?

Girl Guides, probably a Wednesfield group.

• January 1951. Granddad not well. Pay day £6-6-10 monthly. By now Mum was working as a student nursery nurse at Woodlands Nursery (she would later move to Elston Hall Nursery School for 9 months training). She began work with the toddlers which she declared in her diary, was boring. A few months later she was moved to the baby section which she loved.

• 1st February. Granddad not improved. Had doctor.
• Granddad worse. Aunty Hilda coming. My great aunt.

And a few days later -

• Stayed in. Granddad in deep sleep.
• Thursday 8th February. Grandpa at the age of 90 passed away on his birthday. A couple of weeks later she admits, it seems strange without grandpa. 'Grandpa' was Jack Griffiths. In his younger days he'd played for Wolves football club, which I wrote about on a post Family Footballers. 

A poignant note on which to end, particularly because of the date of this post. Mum died 25 years ago today, at the untimely age of 54. I still miss her.