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On This Day 1940

maggieuk

maggieuk

The Fairybrain of Brum
On the night of December 10th morning of December 11th 1940 Birmingham suffered the longest air raid of the war..I ask you to spend a moment today to remember the 262 people killed and the 245 injured
Maggie
 
Thank you Maggie. I remember Mom telling me about it and my aunt lost her house but thankfully not her life! We will remember!
 
Most of my family at that time lived in that badly hit Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath area, how I didn't lose more relatives that night is nothing short of a miracle.

Thanks Maggie for reminding us to remember our loved ones and how they must have suffered on this night all those years ago.:cry:
 
I was living in Icknield Street Hockley at that time and can remember going to the Hockley Corporation bus garage with my sister and mother to shelter from the bombing.The bus garage was used by the local people as an air-raid shelter when I was there.Another time when we where coming out of the bus garage after an air-raid, I can remember us being straffed by a German fighter plane and had to duck into a shop door way the aviod being hit. Zippy.
 
Thank you for the link Len:) Zippy I remember the bus garage and never knew that it was used as an air raid shelter thanks
 
Maggie.
I can still remember, during one air-raid at night time,(could have been the one you mention). The bus garage was set on fire and a lot of buses were in the garage.Volunteers were asked for, to drive the buses out to save them from the raging fire.Most of them were driven out even though some were alight when being driven out and the driivers risked their lives to drive them out.
 
This is a reminder of some of the things Mom told me about the war,I still cannot imagine the horror of being bombed.When we are told of old people being afraid to have their heating on I feel angry ,their generation needs looking after they have seen enough hardship.Mary
 
Quite right Mary, and how they suffered after the war trying to bring us kids up in a very harsh time. 1 000 000 dollars per day was sent to Germany to help out those that did this to our parents! British justice?:(
 
Like you I was born after the war and mom and dad wouldnt talk about it the funny thing is mom always used to laugh about the time she was deposited on someones lap after an air raid in devon why is it that people of that generation can laugh at there misfortune had to be there I guess:)
 
Just decided to push this post to the top again..I ask each of you to spare a few mins today to think of those in Birmingham at the time
 
Sorry guys I am sending this to the top again cos I am sure a lot of our members would be interested
 
thank for the reminder maggie....what a terrible time this was and i will say a prayer for all the lives lost and those that were injured and also the families of those who lost their loved ones.....god bless them all....

lyn
 
Yes maggie I remember it, and the cold & damp from the cellar. No house the next morning staying with neighbours for a few days and moving to another House 2 doors away from our old one as the people were lucky enough to have friends outside Brum and had had enough of it.
 
The earliest memory I can really relate to is the sound of the Air Raid Siren and the very musty smell in the shelter. We were lucky, the closest bomb to our house was in the next road and my two half brothers returned home after the war. We can all give our personal theories on how communities and individuals survived the traumas of nightly air raids and the disruption and carnage they caused. People coped because thats what the vast majority of people were like then.
 
The memory I have of air raids is possibly of that night, mom and me always went into a neighbour's shelter and I think some one wanted to go to the loo so the candle had to be put out before the shelter door was opened and there was a dash up the garden path. Luckily the loos were of course outside.

My thoughts go out to all who lost loved ones that night. It was a hard time for everyone, there was only one way to cope and that was to get on with life, they did and showed the typical English backbone. It's still there and it takes trouble to bring it out. As we saw in London not too long ago.
 
Zippy,
I'm a bit surprised that you went for shelter in Hockley bus garage, because it was seriously damaged above ground on the night of 22-23 November. 19 buses were totally burned out, 4 were partly burned out, and 88 more were damaged.
On the other hand, there would have been cellars under the old ticket block where the original winding engine and gear for the cable tramway (1888-1911) would have been. Perhaps you went down there. Conditions were rough at that time. I spent one night at that time in the pedestrian tunnel under the railway between Grasmere Road and Ashwin Road, about 10 minutes walk away.
My gran lived close by, and I have most of her diaries, but unfortunately not her 1940 one. She kept a brief record of everything that happened, and I have most of them from 1941 until 1975, but that doesn't help on what happened in December 1940.
At that time I was only seven, but I did notice things and had a good memory.
While smaller towns lost much or most of the central area, Birmingham suffered more damage altogether, but it was spread over a greater area, and the authorities decided not to publicise it, as they did about the Coventry bombing.
Peter
 
hi peter...i never tire of reading your brillient posts:) thank you...how lovely that you still have your grans diaires....what fascinating reading they must make...shame they are not in print....

lyn
 
Must have been orrible.

Saw a joke sticker on the back of a Mercedes recently. 'Merc owner-paying the pensions of Goerings Luftwaffe pilots'

Food for thought, with With BMWs and Merc's now outselling pretty much everything else.
 
Thanks for raising this one again Maggie. I was born Jan.1940 so I do not remember this night of course. I do vaguely remember the dank musty smell in the anderson and the sound of the air raid siren. I also remember mom and dad either calling to ask the neighbours if they were alright, or answering because the neighbours had called out first.
 
Hiya Col and Trev ..thanks for your replies ..i cant believe that there was not a mention of it on the Birmingham news ...i was born in 53 so this was something i didn't know about until 3 yrs ago... have made sure my kids and grandkids know though ..as you say Col it really must have been horrible ..i did read in one of Kathleen Dayus's books that the coffins were lined up to get into Warstone Lane cemetery..so sad ..we always hear about Coventry but not Brum
 
Hi Maggie: I was born in October 1941 so don't remember a lot. We didn't know much about the awful bombings in Birmingham particularly via the Government of the day as there was a ban on information for the Midlands re bombing raids. I remember hearing bits and pieces over the years about the bombings in and around Brum but it's only been in the last few years that what happened has been talked about and also written about in any depth. I am learning things every day about what happened. My father was classed as an "Essential Service" due to his knowledge of keeping the Electricity via the Power Stations in Brum going. He was lucky that Bournville and Selly Osk Power Stations weren't bombed but I think he had some perilous journey's on his bike in the pitch dark from Erdington to Bournville and Selly Oak and back. One of my points of reference is the film made in 1987 called "Hope and Glory" with Ian Bannen, Sarah Miles and others. You can look it up on imdb.com I have seen the film many times. Many forum members over the years have posted stories about their families during WW2 and the awful things that happened to them during the Blitz.
My mother-in-law was living in London for most of the war before moving to the East Coast before taking my husband on an escorted War Bride ship to Canada where she joined her Canadian husband three years later when he came home after serving five years with the Seaforth Highlanders. He never discussed the war either but we know he must have seen some awful sights in his time. M-I-Law never talked about the war.
 
l think l must have remembered that night because as the sirens went my dad would pickup my brother and me wrapped in a eiderdowns rush down stairs and into the anderson shelter l hated the place it smelled so damp and we always had a parrafin stove going so what with the damp and parrafin smell it was never to be forgotten....and that was the one time we came out after the allclear and it was daylight and l can'nt remember it being daylight before after a raid......Brenda
 
Yes a time to remember...with a rider that the perpetraitors cities were smashed to smitherines. Pay back in spades. I think that if you Wiki it, there is information to indicate that the UK recieved more Marshall Aid than any other country after WW11. How this relates per.capita is not known. Maybe there is a study somewhere to indicate it's usage and impact. Still it's all history now...then again that is what this forum is about.
 
Yeah, it seems that the old tales were true about German industry and aid. I guess we just never knew that our own predicament was our own fault through choices made. We kids were busy learning about an empire that no longer existed; as a major power anyway. Maybe it is better now if one forgets the current financial problems.
 
Thanks for the information; it give me a picture of my grandmother in Ladywood, 8 months pregnant and the sound of sirens and bombs, and carnage.
 
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