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Aston air raid and gallantry of Brunges and Tozer

ChrisM

ChrisM

Super Moderator
Staff member
The London Gazette of 30th September 1941 announced the award of the George Medal to two members of the Aston Home Guard: Section Leader Alfred Henry George BRUNGES and Patrol Leader Charles William Lovelace TOZER for their work during an air raid on 26th October 1940. (The George Medal was awarded "in recognition of conspicuous gallantry in carying out hazardous work in a very brave manner".)

The following day The Times reported the citation for this award as follows:

During an air raid on Birmingham, Brunges and Tozer went to the aid of a large number of people trapped under the debris of a basement shelter which had been destroyed by a bomb. The basement was rapidly filling with water and a gas main had also been broken. The trapped persons were either buried or held down by parts of the structure. The raid was still in progress and heavy bombs were falling near. Brunges and Tozer gained access to the shelter with great difficulty and began to remove loose beams and debris with their hands. Rescue work was carried out for about three hours and a number of people were extricated.​
Can anyone point me towards further information about this incident please?

Chris
 
Chris, the incident is reported in the book Heros of the Birmingham Air raids by Michael Minton, published by Brewin Books ISBN 1 85858 211 3.
Basically the same as your report it also suggests that the location reported by Tozer as a "Public Shelter" below a fruit & veg shop owned by a Mr Willetts was contradicted by Brunges report which claimed it was a "Public Shelter" corner of Basken Street Lozells opposite Villa Cross picture house.
An extract from a letter from Tozer to the author in 1983 also states:-

"I was a skilled man and had been turned down from the forces because of this,but in that shelter I made a vow that some how I would get onto the forces and kill every German I could get near to. I changed from a nice fellow to a bitter one, who needed revenge,as I was only young and I thought this way. Eventually I got into the Army and became a Sergeant Major, but thats another story"

Colin
 
Chris, there are also a few 'Threads' on this site about the Tozer family and their contribution to the Birmingham Fire Service.
Just put 'Tozer' in the search box on the blue band at the top of the page and they will come up for you if your interested in viewing them.

Pom :angel:
 
Aston Air Raid

I would suggest there is a misprint here and Basken Street should be Barker Street which ran from Hunters Road to Villa Cross.
 
Thanks for the helpful contributions. It's surprising that there should be a contradiction about the location.

The casualty levels in Aston/Lozells that night were appalling and the location descriptions specified in the Swanshust/BARRA site include the following: 'Villa Road Shelter', 'Barker Street Shelter', 'Barker Street' and 'Shelter at corner of Villa Road and Barker Street', as well as 'Witton Road' and 'Witton Road Shelter'. Obviously some of these places are one and the same thing.

(As Pomgolian mentions, there are one or two threads about the Tozers in this forum and in a recent one of these I am trying, amongst other things, to establish exactly who C.W.L. Tozer was and whether he was part of the Tozer family who seemed effectively to run the Birmingham Fire Brigade up to WW2.
https://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/showthread.php?t=10178)

Any further thoughts or information will be very welcome.

Chris
 
Oh my goodness John! seeing it on a map like this makes it so real and also hard to take in.........I just can't imagine how the people coped with this. Some of us now have no idea.
 
changing fortunes

what happened one minute a hero next the push strange that recieved this accolade
October 26th 1940
 
the hero

this is when he was the OK man this is all to do with the biggest air raid of 1940 it's only snippets taken from The Birmingham mail Archive edition
December 26th 1976 if you want the paper I can send it to you send me you address by pm
 
Thanks for the interesting cuttings, John.

The dismissal of the Chief Fire Officer ties in well with a memory I have of my father telling me that the Tozer family had once effectively run the Birmingham Fire Brigade until early in the war when its efficiency was found wanting. The A.R. Tozer who was dismissed was the son of the original Superintendent; in the 1930s, his brother was Second Officer and his son, another A.R., was Third Officer. This last man ("Bob") had been a close schoolboy friend of my father's. I assume that all were still serving in 1940. (This subject is also covered in a parallel thread on this forum).



What precisely the shortcomings of the service were in 1940 I don't know. But I think I remember hearing that they were connected with the incidents in New Street. The early raids must have been been a dreadful test, quite unlike anything the Brigade had encountered before or had really prepared for. The son of one voluntary Birmingham fireman wrote of his father's early wartime experience in the BBC WW2 People's War Archive:
Being very law-abiding the fire engine drivers ..... always stopped at traffic lights if they were red, even during an emergency call out and also when there were almost no other vehicles in existence at the time. ​
At the beginning of the war there were no less than 1450 separate fire brigades throughout the country. It is little wonder that methods, equipment (and its compatibility) and levels of efficiency differed widely and needed co-ordination. All the pre-war brigades and the Auxiliary Fire Service formed at the beginning of the war to support them were merged into the National Fire Service in August 1941. Perhaps the Birmingham events were one of the reasons for this change.

Chris
 
Aston air raid

yes it was New Street Marshall & Snelgroves was the main and fiercest fire this paper I have shows the buildings in New Street blazing away it also mentions Kent street Baths and the people killed and injured
at a tangent one of the daily morning papers as a story a about a Tozer
 
Aston Air Raid

John H, a bit off the thread, but I remember a boy called Tozer at Burlington Street School and I believe he lived in Webster Street. Have you any memories of him?
 
Sylvia l remember a David Tozer and he did live in Webster St just down from New Town Row, l think he also sang in the choir at St Marys,he must have been in my class at Burlington St...........wonder if he was a member of the Tozer family mentioned on the forum.
 
Aston Air Raid

Brenda, thanks for confirmation about David Tozer, I sometimes wonder if my memory is playing tricks. I think he lived in one of those houses with front gardens on the same side of the road as Foster Bros. which was on the corner of Newtown Row/Webster Street. As Tozer is such an unusal name I reckon he could be related to the men in the fire service.
 
Sylvia/Brenda....

I can't do much delving at the moment as I'm away from base. But I recall looking up Tozers in the 1901 Census a week or two ago and had the impression that there were two distinct families in Birmingham at that time, one in the Aston area and one, including two of the firemen, somewhere else. This isn't to say, of course, that they were not connected. The winner of the George Medal, C.W.L Tozer, might have been a member of the Aston branch.

It might be worth doing a look-up in the Census to see if it throws any light on your much later David and his location.

Chris
 
Colin B
A few weeks ago you kindly mentioned and quoted from the book "Heroes of the Birmingham Air Raids". Do you own a copy?

I have seen another, more detailed description of this incident which I suspect is wrongly attributed. Before I use it I should like to be sure of the correct source and I suspect that it came from that book too. If I PMed you the passage, would it be a lot of trouble to look it up for me to check whether that is indeed the source? Should greatly appreciate it.


John Houghton - you mentioned a while back (Dec. 19th) in this thread a story in "one of the morning papers" about another Birmingham Tozer. Could I ask you to scan and pop it in here please?


Thanks to both. (There may be some further information forthcoming shortly about the fate of the Tozer Fire Brigade family and their sudden departure from the scene in 1941. But I am still struggling to find out how C.W.L.Tozer, G.M., was linked to them, if at all).

Chris
 
Brunges and Tozer, 26th October 1940, Villa Cross

I have pulled together various bits of information on this incident at Villa Cross and the bravery of these men, thanks to a large extent to the help of members of this forum, and have recorded it here on this Home Guard website.

Some excellent further information on the Tozer Fire Brigade family has been posted by pipone on the parallel thread in this forum.

Chris
 
The history of the Tozer family is quite well researched in
· Chief officers and professional identities: the case of fire services in English municipal government, c .1870–1938* by Shane Ewen, University of Edinburgh
· The internationalization of fire protection: in pursuit of municipal networks in Edwardian BirminghamSHANE EWEN School of History and Classics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JY
The first paper includes a family tree. Annoyingly it's a male only version of the family tree and thus excludes my great-grandmother, Emily Tozer who was sister to Alfred, Charles, William, Frederic and Joseph Tozer. All men in the family apart from Joseph were fire chiefs etc. The paper explains about how the Tozer 'dynasty' ended due to the mishandling of a fire during a bombing raid in WW2. i can email anyone the papers if they wish as you have to pay to download from the internet
The Tozer managed to become fire chiefs just about everywhere - not just Birmingham, but Manchester, Bristol, London and even India during the days of the Empire! My grandmother talked quite a bit about Joseph as he was an actor in the West End and holywood. If you look on www.imdb.com all his films are listed there.
 
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