by Anne Bennett
But while Birmingham and other towns and cities throughout Britain were enduring nightly raids, devastation and death, Hitler had massed his invasion fleet on the other side of the English Channel. The RAF, to prevent the invasion taking place, took on the might of the Luftwaffe in a series of air battles that later became known as ‘The Battle of Britain’.
On 7th September, London was attacked for the first time when three hundred bombers headed for the docks. This was seen as part of the build-up to invasion.
Everyone was on alert, the Home Guard mustering its members together, but by the end of the day there was no movement of German ships towards Britain. High alert stayed in force all the next day and night whilst the RAF continued to dispel the enemy.
One of the workers who worked alongside Bridie and Mary came to work in great excitement one day having witnessed a dog-fight between a German Stuka plane and a Spitfire above her house. ‘Seen nothing so exciting in my whole life,’ she said. ‘There was a crowd of us cheering our bloke on.’
‘He won, I suppose?’ one woman asked.
‘’Course he bleeding well won. Didn’t let up on the other one. Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat – on and on it went. And then they both wheeled and dodged. One minute the Spitfire was above the other and before the German plane had time to turn around, he’d dived below him and when he tried to follow, the Spitfire was up and to the one side of him and then the other. The German plane hadn’t a chance. Eventually, it began to lose height, smoke spiralling out the back of it and the plane spun round, and hit the ground and exploded. I cheered and shouted till my bleeding throat was sore, I’ll tell you.’
‘Wish I’d seen it,’ another said.
Bridie could understand, well understand their attitude, and yet she couldn’t get the idea out of her head that the pilot was somebody’s son, maybe a favoured brother, or a beloved daddy. But she knew such views would be unpopular and possibly misunderstood and therefore kept them to herself.
On 15th September, the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe in a large aerial battle. Hitler had failed to knock out the airfields or the anti-aircraft weapons, or destroy ports on the south coast, and now his famed Luftwaffe had been vanquished by the British. He put his invasion plans on hold, at least for that year.
But the people in Birmingham weren’t able to breathe a sigh of relief. Almost nightly the sirens would wail and they would stumble from their bed and take shelter in some place they considered moderately safe.
Occasionally, there was a night without a raid, without blaring sirens, and on those nights, Bridie, like many more, would lie wide awake waiting for them. Any sleep she eventually, through sheer exhaustion, succumbed to was shallow and fitful. She was feeling the strain. She was constantly tired: coping with a full-time job and caring for children, as well as dealing with the blackout and juggling the ration books to provide meals and writing cheerful letters to Tom, was enough for anyone. But added to that was the parasitical Peggy McKenna, taking a pound a week from her and prophesying doom and gloom to her and her family.
The point was potential doom and gloom visited them almost nightly, not from any vengeful God in some pious retribution ritual, but from a nation of people very like themselves.
The first daylight raid came on 27th September at the Dunlop factory. The single bomb caused little damage and no loss of life, but it wasn’t for the want of trying because after dropping the bomb, the pilot opened up fire on the people waiting at the bus stop.
There were other instances reported in the paper. There was talk of a Midland Red bus being machine-gunned and other men, seeking shelter from a raid, were trapped in an entry, unable to move because Germans were shooting indiscriminately. More shocking was the tale of a mother, baby in her arms and two children hanging to her skirts, who ran into a nearby park after a bomb landed on their home, only to be strafed with machine-gun fire.
Bridie wondered if their own soldiers would behave the same towards unarmed and defenceless civilians and sincerely hoped they wouldn’t. She couldn’t see her Tom doing that sort of thing anyway. She worried about him constantly. He could tell little in his letters, but she knew the dangers he faced daily.
She’d read enough about Dunkirk when it was actually happening and then when there was no news of Tom or Eddie. But when the men came home, their eyes told how much they had really suffered. Bridie remembered the night Tom’s threshing in the bed had woken her. She’s found him drenched with sweat and the next night his screams had nearly woken the street. There had been times when he’d stare into space for hours, his eyes bleak and haunted, often not hearing people when they spoke to him.
That was why most women didn’t worry their husbands in the forces with domestic issues and just got on with life as best they could. They couldn’t afford to consider defeat and hoped and prayed earnestly that their husbands would return to them in one piece at the end of it all.
A trip to the city centre now was very different to one before the war. The city itself had changed. Corporation Street had been very badly hit. C&A Modes and many other shops were gone, with gaping holes and piles of rubble in their places. Snow Hill had suffered badly from fire and many of the shops and offices on Colmore Road and out as far as St Paul’s Square in the Jewellery Quarter had been burned to the ground.
Then there was the Bull Ring, but the main damage there was to the Market Hall. When Bridie first saw it after the August raid she wondered what had happened to the animals. Had they been wiped out with a bomb blast, or burnt to a crisp in the resultant fire, or had someone had time to open the cages and free them? And would they fare any better left running mad around the Bull Ring?
The Market Hall itself was just a shell and a barrier had been erected around it to prevent people getting too close, though a hole blasted in one of the walls enabled anyone to see in. Charred roof beams lay across the rubble, broken bricks, lumps of plaster, buckled iron stands and battered utensils of every description were piled inside. People had stuck Union Jack flags in amongst the rubble and one had a slogan beside it saying ‘Burnt, but not broken.’
It was that defiance which brought the tears to Bridie’s eyes and she turned to Mary, who’d accompanied her that Saturday morning, and said, ‘Isn’t it sad?’
‘Aye,’ Mary said with a sigh. ‘It’s like ripping out the heart of the city really. Do you mind how it used to be on Saturday evenings?’
Bridie did, oh yes. But now everyone scurried home early, scared of the dark, still more scared of moonlit nights. There was nothing to stay for, no gas flares now could light up the Bull Ring. Stall-holders too were anxious to pack up early and go home.
‘D’you think we’ve had our lot now?’ Bridie asked, for it was the first week in October and there had been no raids that week at all.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Mary said. ‘After all, Londoners are catching it every night and the south coast and Liverpool have also taken a hammering. Why should we be different?’
Bridie didn’t know, she just hoped they were. But their ordeal was only just beginning, though they weren’t aware of it.
On 14th October, Clementine Churchill – Winston Churchill’s wife – visited the city. She went to two factories and an area particularly affected by bombing and Bridie and her fellow workers were allowed an hour off to wave to her as she passed along Bristol Street.
A Mrs Hurtle, whose house was in ruins, was reported in the Evening Mail as saying: ‘Our house is down, but our spirits are still up.’ Mrs Churchill was impressed by her unflinching courage, a facet she said she saw often amongst the working classes everywhere.
The Brummies had need of their courage, for once more the raids continued their nightly pattern. The attacks often went on for hours and incendiaries, parachute mines and landmines were being dropped as well as ordinary bombs.
A further worry was bothering Bridie though. Bridie’s new gas cooker had been put in an alcove just off the cellar and since the middle of September, she’d been br
inging food down to the cellar for the children and themselves. She’d also been making tea for her and Mary and cocoa for Mary’s boys and her own two. Then she saw the article in the Evening Mail in mid-October. George Inman was a Home Guard Officer and had been called to a bombed-out house to help people who’d been trapped in the cellar after a raid, and which was filling with gas from a fractured gas pipe. George went in to rescue them and got two out before collapsing and dying from the gas poisoning himself.
Ever since, Bridie had tortured herself with the thought of them all, but especially her precious children, being choked to death with gas fumes. This fear had been fuelled by Peggy McKenna who’d saved the piece from the paper and brought it round to Bridie’s when she collected her weekly pound note.
With Bridie so worn down with tiredness and worry for the children’s safety, it wasn’t hard to turn her view of the cellar being a sanctuary for them all to it being a grave. In fact she was so jumpy she declared she wouldn’t spend another night there.
‘Be reasonable, Bridie,’ Mary said. ‘The weans are only young. It’s coming on to winter and the nights are chilly. Do you really want to take them down Grant Street and along Bristol Passage to a public shelter?’
‘No, of course I don’t,’ Bridie declared. ‘But neither do I want them to choke to death.’
‘This is silly. It was one instance.’
‘One instance reported,’ Bridie said. ‘There could be hundreds more. How many gas pipes do you know that could stand up to a bomb blast?’
‘Oh Bridie,’ said Mary in exasperation. Once Bridie had an idea fixed in her head, there was little chance of changing it, especially if it was connected with the safety of her children.
‘I shan’t use the cellar again,’ Bridie said. ‘You of course must do as you see fit.’
‘I’ll come with you, you silly bugger,’ Mary said. ‘If you’re determined on doing this, you’ll need a hand with the weans.’
‘I think Bridie’s clean barmy,’ Mary said to Ellen later. ‘Taking the kids from their warm bed and traipsing them through the streets to a public shelter.’
‘Aye, well she has her reasons.’
‘What will you do, Ellen?’
‘Nothing,’ Ellen said. ‘Sam’s not fit to leave his bed and my place is beside him.’
Mary said nothing. There was no hiding the fact that Sam was failing and she and Bridie were saddened by it, for the man had been kindness itself to them and they knew they would miss him.
The sirens screamed out just before seven o’clock on 19th November and Bridie groaned. They’d had raids all through November, almost every night and sometimes accompanied by a daylight raid too.
She didn’t regret her decision to go to the public shelter, feeling sure it would be safer. But she did regret having to get the children up and out into the night and trailing them through the unwelcoming black night. Bridie had a flickering and shaded torch to light their way; she’d been lucky enough to find a shop that had some batteries left just a few days before. Batteries were like gold dust and she was glad of even that shaded pencil of light in the inky blackness.
She was so weary too, dead beat, and so were the children and had been already dressed for bed. At least she hadn’t had to wake them she thought and she put their shoes and socks back on, pulled a jumper over their pyjamas and then helped them on with their siren suits. She pulled her own coat from the hook behind the door, slung her bag over her shoulder and held out her hands to Liam and Katie. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Auntie Mary will be in on us in a minute and we won’t be ready,’ and they stepped out and Bridie closed the door behind them.
Mary was just coming for her holding Mickey by the hand, but there was no sign of Jay. ‘Where’s the big fellow?’ Bridie asked with a grin as they began hurrying down the road, but the face Mary turned to her was far from happy.
‘You tell me,’ she said grimly.
‘What is it?’
‘Silly sod took himself off to Thorpe Street Barracks today so Mickey here tells me. Told him he was going to offer himself as a messenger for the Home Guard. I’ll kill him when I catch hold of him.’
Bridie understood her sister’s concern, but she said soothingly, ‘He’ll take shelter somewhere, Mary. He’ll be all right.’
‘But will he, Bridie? God knows, he’s as big as a lad of fifteen,’ Mary said, as they turned into the shelter door. ‘By God, if they’ve taken him on without checking his age, I’ll wipe the floor with them.’
Bridie said nothing, but she thought in the raids they’d had just lately, the authorities would be glad of anyone to pass messages or run errands and could easily turn a blind eye to technicalities like someone’s age.
But to say this wouldn’t help her sister so she patted her hand reassuringly. ‘Jay isn’t stupid,’ she said. ‘He’ll be fine.’
‘Aye,’ Mary said with a sigh. ‘He seems to have shed his childhood since Dunkirk. Wants to do his bit.’
Bridie had noticed the change in her nephew, who wouldn’t be thirteen until the New Year, but many had had their childhood ripped from them as war stripped them of loved ones and their homes. ‘Come on,’ she said to Mary. ‘Let’s get in, Hitler’s in a hurry tonight. And try not to worry about Jay. Like I said before, he’ll be in a shelter somewhere worrying about you, no doubt.’
As the shelter door closed behind her, Bridie hoped and prayed that what she said was right.
The shelter was crowded. After the raid on Coventry five days before, Brummies were nervous. They’d suffered a fairly substantial raid the same night themselves, but Coventry had been nearly annihilated. Within a square mile, eighty percent of the buildings were destroyed, five hundred and sixty-eight people lay dead and hundreds more were gravely injured.
Bridie claimed one of the bunks up at the far end and Mary got the one beside her. People continued to stream in as the siren screamed out. Despite the raid, people were laughing and joking together. Irish Johnny had brought his gramophone. He probably had sweets too because he worked at Cadbury’s. He didn’t always come to the shelter because he did fire watching and a bit of Home Guard duty, being too old for the forces, but, if he’d got hold of any misshapes from Cadbury’s he’d come down to the shelter the first chance he had.
He’d play all the Irish jigs and reels and catch up the children’s hands and dance around the room in an effort to try and get them to ignore the thumps and crashes around them. And then, when they stopped for a breather, he’d produce the chocolates, which he’d share out amongst them.
Bridie watched the man wind up his gramophone and said, ‘He’s a kind man, that Johnny.’
‘He is right enough,’ Mary agreed. ‘Let’s hope this little lot’s over and we can go back home soon before many reels are played, because to tell you the truth, I’m jiggered.’
The people in the shelters were unaware then that they were going to suffer a pounding similar to Coventry. They were used to the Germans’ strategies though and when they heard few explosions and the distinctive whistle of the incendiaries, one man remarked, ‘There y’are, Jerry does it all the bloody time, drops incendiaries to light up the targets like it’s bleeding daylight and we risk breaking our necks in the blackout – it’s madness.’
The bombers followed. The whistle as the arrows of death and destruction hurled downwards was almost as terrifying as the booming explosions when they landed. The ack-ack guns had started up their tattoo into the night, but nothing seemed to stop the bombs falling that night, one after the other, with barely a space between them.
Some shook the walls of the shelter and Bridie looked at them fearfully, wondering if the whole structure was going to collapse on top of them all. Two hours into the raid and Irish Johnny had put his gramophone aside and was leading the children in songs and hymns they knew. Many looked scared to death and with reason. Bridie felt as if every nerve ending was exposed and raw and primeval fear, such as she’d never felt in her life, was affecting
her limbs, making her shake all over.
A woman gave a sudden shriek and sank to her knees and began to howl in distress, while another beside her began the rosary, playing the beads between her hands, saying the prayers like a litany.
Bridie’s terrified eyes met those of her sister. ‘Oh God, I … I’m so s … scared,’ Bridie could barely speak, her teeth chattered so.
‘We’re all scared,’ Mary said. Her thoughts were with her eldest son, no more than a boy, out in the teeth of the longest and worst raid Birmingham had ever endured so far.
‘What … what right have I got to put them through this?’ Bridie said, indicating the children. Both were sitting on the bunk, dropping with fatigue, yet too afraid to sleep. ‘Why didn’t I send them away when I had the chance?’
‘Hush, Bridie. This isn’t your fault,’ Mary said. ‘You made the same decision as me. We wouldn’t send them to strangers.’
‘Not strangers no,’ Bridie said. ‘But, maybe Mammy would have them. Didn’t Daddy say they would?’
‘Aye, he did,’ Mary said, and she drew Bridie to her and put her arms around her. ‘But remember Mammy didn’t. Come on we’ll talk about it later,’ she said, frightened of Bridie’s wild eyes and trembling body.
‘If we survive you mean,’ Bridie cried. ‘And if we don’t, if anything happens to my children, it will be my fault, a judgement on me.’
‘Bridie, that simply isn’t true,’ Mary said. ‘Here, sit on the bunk. I’ll pour you a nice cup of tea from the vacuum flask.’
Bridie’s hands shook so much Mary had to cover them with her own to stop her spilling the tea all over her. She wished she’d had a drop of brandy to put into it, for the trauma of the last few weeks had seemed to have eventually got to her sister. Katie and Liam looked on with wide terrified eyes and her own Mickey was in little better shape.
