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Seventy-five Years Ago Today....
- Thread starter ChrisM
- Start date
I think I'm right in saying that the liberation of Auschwitz passed, at the time, almost without being noticed. I haven't researched this in detail but I do recall noting that in The Times Archive the initial report, astonishingly, amounted to about five lines, tucked away in some obscure part of the newspaper. What other reporting there was, I don't know, and I certainly wasn't conscious of it myself. Was there ever anything in the Birmingham newspapers?
I suppose it wasn't too surprising if this was a non-event. So much else going on at that moment, not least the end of the Battle of the Bulge which had led to 81,000 American casualties; and much else in Western Europe, on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific. Also it was the Soviet Army which was involved and so news, and any detail, was minimal.
So different a few weeks later when the camps in the West were liberated – names we all know now as well: Buchenwald on April 11th , Belsen 15th, Dachau 29th. Journalists and military film crew closely involved almost immediately. I remember very clearly the day when the Daily Mail carried the first reports, almost certainly of Belsen. My parents didn't want to let me see it and hid the paper under an armchair. That ruse didn't work and so, a week after my ninth birthday, I surreptitiously read everything.
I don't know how long it took for a full understanding of Auschwitz to be achieved and become widely known. But I think it took an age. And now it's a name which will never ever be forgotten and nor should it be.
Chris
I suppose it wasn't too surprising if this was a non-event. So much else going on at that moment, not least the end of the Battle of the Bulge which had led to 81,000 American casualties; and much else in Western Europe, on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific. Also it was the Soviet Army which was involved and so news, and any detail, was minimal.
So different a few weeks later when the camps in the West were liberated – names we all know now as well: Buchenwald on April 11th , Belsen 15th, Dachau 29th. Journalists and military film crew closely involved almost immediately. I remember very clearly the day when the Daily Mail carried the first reports, almost certainly of Belsen. My parents didn't want to let me see it and hid the paper under an armchair. That ruse didn't work and so, a week after my ninth birthday, I surreptitiously read everything.
I don't know how long it took for a full understanding of Auschwitz to be achieved and become widely known. But I think it took an age. And now it's a name which will never ever be forgotten and nor should it be.
Chris
Pedrocut
Master Barmmie
APRIL 15, 1945, my late uncle was among the first...
“The 63rd Anti-tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division of the British army liberate about 60,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“The 63rd Anti-tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division of the British army liberate about 60,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
'Belsen showed me how low mankind can sink'
One of the last Scots who was an eyewitness to the horrors of the Holocaust has died at the age of 97.
www.bbc.co.uk
The liberation of Belsen on April 15th, and especially the images and descriptions which appeared in the newspapers a few days later, made an immense impression on everyone, not least on me. I remember it so well and have never forgotten. For my parents and other grown-ups, I imagine that none of the evils which they had long suspected matched up at all to the reality when it finally hit them.
Eight months later, in December 1945 and long after it had been cleared up, my father saw the camp when he was in Northern Germany. He was photographed outside it. That image has been lost but this is the one he took of his comrade at the same time. The buildings behind the barbed wire are substantial. They are not at all temporary as one might expect from the contemporary newsreels and newspaper images: rather they are permanent and, as my father later noted in the photograph album, designed to be used for many generations to come.
Chris
Eight months later, in December 1945 and long after it had been cleared up, my father saw the camp when he was in Northern Germany. He was photographed outside it. That image has been lost but this is the one he took of his comrade at the same time. The buildings behind the barbed wire are substantial. They are not at all temporary as one might expect from the contemporary newsreels and newspaper images: rather they are permanent and, as my father later noted in the photograph album, designed to be used for many generations to come.
Chris
Bob Davis
Bob Davis
In 1955 stationed at Minden, a group of us had to go to Hamburg army business, on the way back wè passed through the village Belsen Bergen, as it was lunch time we stopped at the local Gasthaus for ein bier und bratwurst, during a rather uncomfortable stop, the village name was mentioned and the immediate reply was we did not know what was going on etc. Àfter lunch we decided to go and take a look ... it was a beautiful day the birds were singing, we reached what must have been an entrance, went in and somehow it went cold, the birds stopped singing and there was a strange smell, it is all still in my memory. We left immediately and no one said a thing until we got back to Minden
Bob
Radiorails
master brummie
The post 66# by Bob is very interesting. I find photographs of those places - there were very many besides the more well known place names - quite distressing. To visit there would harrowing to say the least.
Bob Davis
Bob Davis
Alan
I cannot explain it, it was just a field down a country lane, but somehow the minute we entered, everything altered and even as I write this I can recall the smell, what was also strange was that we were in an Austin Champ with the top down and a trailer behind, all the way up and back as far as Belsen Bergen, we had chatted, laughed and were typically 'squaddies'. From Belsen Bergen back to Minden, we were sombre and silent.
Bob
Had a not dissimilar experience when I was in southern Germany in the 1980s.
My colleague and I drew up at our hotel in quite a pleasant little town not far from Munich and I was astonished to find that its name was Dachau. I never realised it was an actual town as well as that dreadful place whose name is so familiar. Couldn't understand why, after the war, they didn't change it. But they didn't, and I suppose that for much of the population of both countries, it doesn't really resonate very much these days, at least amongst the youngsters.
We had a bit of time to spare before supper and so we found the camp. Not much more than a stone's throw outside the town. By then a fairly tidied up Museum. Truly ghastly place, eerie and full of ghosts. Amongst the crimes committed there was a series of medical experiments carried out on behalf of (or even by) the Luftwaffe. Oxygen deprivation and that sort of thing. There was no one there but us and when we left, and were glad to, the guard was obviously waiting for us so that he could lock up. He had the decency not to give us a glare.
Not much to say to each other and I didn't sleep all that well that night.
Now I come to think of it, it was a bit ironic that the following morning we found ourselves trying to sell some bits and pieces to a Munich aircraft engine manufacturer. The chap we were dealing with, now fairly elderly, had as a 19 or 20-year-old been a Focke-Wulf 190 pilot (and was, therefore, I suppose, the theoretical beneficiary of some of this dreadful work carried out just down the road - as was the USAAF, later). Hans was a nice fellow and we liked him. He told us that in late April and the first week of May 1945 he and his Squadron were at a central Berlin aerodrome – Gatow, I think. The planes were there, fuelled up and ready to go. But nothing happened, day after day. Perhaps they were being held in reserve ready to help the escape of some top Nazi, trying to save his neck. Bormann, Goebbels, the Monster-in-Chief himself? Who knows? Eventually they all turned their backs on the aircraft, everything. And just walked.
Hans's opinion was of less historical impact: he thought that his C.O. was just trying to save their lives and wouldn't order his planes up into the air on behalf of a lost cause.
Chris
My colleague and I drew up at our hotel in quite a pleasant little town not far from Munich and I was astonished to find that its name was Dachau. I never realised it was an actual town as well as that dreadful place whose name is so familiar. Couldn't understand why, after the war, they didn't change it. But they didn't, and I suppose that for much of the population of both countries, it doesn't really resonate very much these days, at least amongst the youngsters.
We had a bit of time to spare before supper and so we found the camp. Not much more than a stone's throw outside the town. By then a fairly tidied up Museum. Truly ghastly place, eerie and full of ghosts. Amongst the crimes committed there was a series of medical experiments carried out on behalf of (or even by) the Luftwaffe. Oxygen deprivation and that sort of thing. There was no one there but us and when we left, and were glad to, the guard was obviously waiting for us so that he could lock up. He had the decency not to give us a glare.
Not much to say to each other and I didn't sleep all that well that night.
Now I come to think of it, it was a bit ironic that the following morning we found ourselves trying to sell some bits and pieces to a Munich aircraft engine manufacturer. The chap we were dealing with, now fairly elderly, had as a 19 or 20-year-old been a Focke-Wulf 190 pilot (and was, therefore, I suppose, the theoretical beneficiary of some of this dreadful work carried out just down the road - as was the USAAF, later). Hans was a nice fellow and we liked him. He told us that in late April and the first week of May 1945 he and his Squadron were at a central Berlin aerodrome – Gatow, I think. The planes were there, fuelled up and ready to go. But nothing happened, day after day. Perhaps they were being held in reserve ready to help the escape of some top Nazi, trying to save his neck. Bormann, Goebbels, the Monster-in-Chief himself? Who knows? Eventually they all turned their backs on the aircraft, everything. And just walked.
Hans's opinion was of less historical impact: he thought that his C.O. was just trying to save their lives and wouldn't order his planes up into the air on behalf of a lost cause.
Chris
It's Monday May 7th 1945. And it's nearly evening.
I'm sitting at the table in our dining room (which is really our living room). Quite a lot happens at this table. I do my homework here (I've done tonight's although I'm not sure I needed to). Mum, Dad and my sister Sheila write letters, especially to my brother Graham who's still in Italy. Mum does her darning here and sometimes lifts the Singer sewing machine up onto it to do seams on clothes or big things like curtains. Sheila uses it as well sometimes, when she's making dresses from patterns and that sort of thing. I'm not allowed to get anywhere near it. The needle could go right through your finger. Doesn't look to me anything like as dangerous as Dad's Home Guard rifles (he's still got three), or his revolver which I know is in his vest and pants drawer, but it's not worth arguing about because I'm not that interested. Although it IS quite good fun to turn the handle and hear everything whirring and see the needle going up and down and the material moving itself forward underneath it. I wonder how it does it.
Behind me, on either side of the fireplace, are Dad and Mum's leather armchairs. Dad's just got back from work and he's sitting in his, reading the newspaper and smoking his pipe. Sheila is upstairs, getting ready to go out, somewhere. She goes out a lot. To the Youth Club, dances, the ice rink in Birmingham. She's seventeen. Tonight she'll probably be meeting up with her friends to talk about what's happened today. Mum is probably in the kitchen, getting supper ready. So her chair is empty. I glance over my shoulder at it. About three weeks ago the morning newspaper seemed to be rather special. I didn't know why and I wasn't allowed to look at it and my parents wouldn't talk about it. Mum or Dad put it under Mum's armchair to keep it away from me. That wasn't a very good hiding place and, of course, the moment they were out of the way I grabbed it. It was all about one of those camps, concentration camps they call them. I had heard about them before. I think this one was called Belsen which our troops had liberated a few days earlier. The newspaper was full of dreadful photographs and descriptions. I read it all, every word. And I'll probably never forget it. It has just made us all hate the Germans even more than ever. If that was possible. It is easy for me – I have never met a German, except in my nightmares. But Dad had friends there before the war. I expect he is wondering what has happened to them and, if they are still alive, why they have done such awful things since he last saw them.
Every day, we have been getting nearer and nearer to Berlin. I read all about it in the paper every single day. And I had my birthday a month ago. Now I'm nine. My brother is still in Italy, he was fighting last week near Ravenna but everything there stopped a few days ago and we think he is OK. Last Wednesday we heard that Hitler was dead and that was just marvellous. Since then it's been obvious that we are going to win. But they have a new leader now. His name is Doenitz. He says he's not going to give up. And so we have been carrying on, not knowing when it is really going to happen. Or even if.
Anyway, I'm sitting here thinking about what went on this afternoon.
I was in the garden, mucking about. It's been a nice day. I had got back from school and then went outside. Just Mum in the house. Dad and Sheila not home from work. They've both got jobs at ICI at Witton. Don't think I was doing anything in particular. I like our garden and just being in it. Dad has done so much to make it beautiful and interesting. This was it not long after they had moved in, in 1931.
(That's my elder brother. I think it was his first day at Bishop Vesey's in Sutton). The house was brand new. Dad had just started on the paths, They were later done in concrete, marked to look like crazy paving. Tons and tons of it. Of course the garden's got quite neglected over the last few years because Dad has been so busy. He still talks about what it looked like before the war. (And we have colour photographs of it then). But it still looks pretty good to me and now, here we are in early May, and everything is sprouting and starting to flower. Even the spuds are beginning to show themselves.
This is another photo after a lot of work had been done. It's from about ten years ago, in 1935 or 1936. I am only showing it so you can see where I was, this afternoon - near the log at the end of the lawn.
(As I say, this is an old photograph, taken not long after Dad had done most of the work, about ten years ago. You can see the borders, the rockery, the paths, the swing which looks like the entrance to a church, the pool, Sheila's Wendy house which he built for her 7th or 8th birthday, some of the plants. What isn't there is The Dugout, our air raid shelter. It wasn't needed, then. Then Dad built it just beyond the log and the little cherry tree and I can just remember him doing it. We haven't been down in it for ages and it's starting to get a bit damp and smelly).
So that's where I am at that moment. Somewhere near the big log. I am looking back towards the house, into the sun. Nothing's happening. Then our neighbour, Mrs Bacon, appears and comes to the fence, holding a newspaper and calling out to my mum. Mum comes out of the house and goes over to her. I hear exactly what is said even though Mrs. Bacon is speaking quietly as she holds out the paper. This is all she says:
"Freda, it's all over".
Mum takes the paper and looks at it. They talk for a few minutes. There's no whoops of joy, no clapping of hands. Just quiet chat. I don't think to check if anyone is crying. Grown-ups don't normally do that. Mum did just once, which I told you about before. But you can never tell. Grown-ups are funny people. Perhaps there is the odd tear, again. I'm too far away to see. And anyway, they should be happy, not sad.
Then finally each of them walk away from the fence and go back inside.
Mrs Bacon is probably thinking about her husband. He's been in Malta for years. Now perhaps she will see him again, fairly soon. And Mum will certainly be thinking about my brother.
And that's the moment when I knew that the end had come. Tomorrow is VE Day. No school. Mr. Churchill will be on the wireless at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And in the evening there is a huge bonfire a little way up the road, here in Streetly, in a field just after Bridle Lane and Puddepha's corner shop. That'll be super. I may tell you about it afterwards.
And as for tonight, I'll go to bed eventually. Just like any other night. Then, after reading for a bit, I shall go to sleep with the world at peace. (Or at least our part of it - because the Japs are still there). That's what will be different. I wonder what it will feel like. I can't properly remember doing it before.
Chris
I'm sitting at the table in our dining room (which is really our living room). Quite a lot happens at this table. I do my homework here (I've done tonight's although I'm not sure I needed to). Mum, Dad and my sister Sheila write letters, especially to my brother Graham who's still in Italy. Mum does her darning here and sometimes lifts the Singer sewing machine up onto it to do seams on clothes or big things like curtains. Sheila uses it as well sometimes, when she's making dresses from patterns and that sort of thing. I'm not allowed to get anywhere near it. The needle could go right through your finger. Doesn't look to me anything like as dangerous as Dad's Home Guard rifles (he's still got three), or his revolver which I know is in his vest and pants drawer, but it's not worth arguing about because I'm not that interested. Although it IS quite good fun to turn the handle and hear everything whirring and see the needle going up and down and the material moving itself forward underneath it. I wonder how it does it.
Behind me, on either side of the fireplace, are Dad and Mum's leather armchairs. Dad's just got back from work and he's sitting in his, reading the newspaper and smoking his pipe. Sheila is upstairs, getting ready to go out, somewhere. She goes out a lot. To the Youth Club, dances, the ice rink in Birmingham. She's seventeen. Tonight she'll probably be meeting up with her friends to talk about what's happened today. Mum is probably in the kitchen, getting supper ready. So her chair is empty. I glance over my shoulder at it. About three weeks ago the morning newspaper seemed to be rather special. I didn't know why and I wasn't allowed to look at it and my parents wouldn't talk about it. Mum or Dad put it under Mum's armchair to keep it away from me. That wasn't a very good hiding place and, of course, the moment they were out of the way I grabbed it. It was all about one of those camps, concentration camps they call them. I had heard about them before. I think this one was called Belsen which our troops had liberated a few days earlier. The newspaper was full of dreadful photographs and descriptions. I read it all, every word. And I'll probably never forget it. It has just made us all hate the Germans even more than ever. If that was possible. It is easy for me – I have never met a German, except in my nightmares. But Dad had friends there before the war. I expect he is wondering what has happened to them and, if they are still alive, why they have done such awful things since he last saw them.
Every day, we have been getting nearer and nearer to Berlin. I read all about it in the paper every single day. And I had my birthday a month ago. Now I'm nine. My brother is still in Italy, he was fighting last week near Ravenna but everything there stopped a few days ago and we think he is OK. Last Wednesday we heard that Hitler was dead and that was just marvellous. Since then it's been obvious that we are going to win. But they have a new leader now. His name is Doenitz. He says he's not going to give up. And so we have been carrying on, not knowing when it is really going to happen. Or even if.
Anyway, I'm sitting here thinking about what went on this afternoon.
I was in the garden, mucking about. It's been a nice day. I had got back from school and then went outside. Just Mum in the house. Dad and Sheila not home from work. They've both got jobs at ICI at Witton. Don't think I was doing anything in particular. I like our garden and just being in it. Dad has done so much to make it beautiful and interesting. This was it not long after they had moved in, in 1931.
(That's my elder brother. I think it was his first day at Bishop Vesey's in Sutton). The house was brand new. Dad had just started on the paths, They were later done in concrete, marked to look like crazy paving. Tons and tons of it. Of course the garden's got quite neglected over the last few years because Dad has been so busy. He still talks about what it looked like before the war. (And we have colour photographs of it then). But it still looks pretty good to me and now, here we are in early May, and everything is sprouting and starting to flower. Even the spuds are beginning to show themselves.
This is another photo after a lot of work had been done. It's from about ten years ago, in 1935 or 1936. I am only showing it so you can see where I was, this afternoon - near the log at the end of the lawn.
(As I say, this is an old photograph, taken not long after Dad had done most of the work, about ten years ago. You can see the borders, the rockery, the paths, the swing which looks like the entrance to a church, the pool, Sheila's Wendy house which he built for her 7th or 8th birthday, some of the plants. What isn't there is The Dugout, our air raid shelter. It wasn't needed, then. Then Dad built it just beyond the log and the little cherry tree and I can just remember him doing it. We haven't been down in it for ages and it's starting to get a bit damp and smelly).
So that's where I am at that moment. Somewhere near the big log. I am looking back towards the house, into the sun. Nothing's happening. Then our neighbour, Mrs Bacon, appears and comes to the fence, holding a newspaper and calling out to my mum. Mum comes out of the house and goes over to her. I hear exactly what is said even though Mrs. Bacon is speaking quietly as she holds out the paper. This is all she says:
"Freda, it's all over".
Mum takes the paper and looks at it. They talk for a few minutes. There's no whoops of joy, no clapping of hands. Just quiet chat. I don't think to check if anyone is crying. Grown-ups don't normally do that. Mum did just once, which I told you about before. But you can never tell. Grown-ups are funny people. Perhaps there is the odd tear, again. I'm too far away to see. And anyway, they should be happy, not sad.
Then finally each of them walk away from the fence and go back inside.
Mrs Bacon is probably thinking about her husband. He's been in Malta for years. Now perhaps she will see him again, fairly soon. And Mum will certainly be thinking about my brother.
And that's the moment when I knew that the end had come. Tomorrow is VE Day. No school. Mr. Churchill will be on the wireless at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. And in the evening there is a huge bonfire a little way up the road, here in Streetly, in a field just after Bridle Lane and Puddepha's corner shop. That'll be super. I may tell you about it afterwards.
And as for tonight, I'll go to bed eventually. Just like any other night. Then, after reading for a bit, I shall go to sleep with the world at peace. (Or at least our part of it - because the Japs are still there). That's what will be different. I wonder what it will feel like. I can't properly remember doing it before.
Chris
Well, a couple of days have passed and now it's Wednesday May 9th. I promised to tell you something about last night's bonfire.
Perhaps you'd like to know where it was. I'm going to show you Dad's prewar map which tells you. (It also tells you a bit about the northern part of Birmingham at the present time, if you don't know it already. The map was printed in 1938 and nothing has changed much since then). Here it is. It's at the very top of the map. I'm showing you where I live, where the bonfire was last night and also where Dad's friend Mr. Hall lives.
That was the easy bit! I'm now going to do something which is very difficult. Not only difficult but, if I can do it, quite clever as well (I'm sorry if that sounds a bit like boasting because Mum says I should never boast). But this is what I'm going to try and do. I'm going to pretend that I'm not nine but EIGHTY-FOUR!! I'm going to try and think of everything which happened last night which I might still be able to remember 75 years in the future. Yes, in the year 2020. Gosh, that's a long, long way into the future. What will the world be like then? I shall be more than grown-up by that time, I shall be VERY OLD INDEED. Older than Dad and Mum are now, even. Nearly twice as old as them and THEY were born in the 19th century and so they are pretty old as well, already. I don't think I have ever met anyone over 70. But I think that a few people do live longer than that and so I am not asking you to believe the impossible.
Don't ask me why I should try and do something so difficult. I have my reasons. And I bet you are thinking that I shan't even be able to do it. Or even that it's some sort of trick.
But here goes. It's in the next post. I am sorry that nobody took pictures. Dad hasn't taken many for years. I think the film is very difficult to get.
Chris
Perhaps you'd like to know where it was. I'm going to show you Dad's prewar map which tells you. (It also tells you a bit about the northern part of Birmingham at the present time, if you don't know it already. The map was printed in 1938 and nothing has changed much since then). Here it is. It's at the very top of the map. I'm showing you where I live, where the bonfire was last night and also where Dad's friend Mr. Hall lives.
That was the easy bit! I'm now going to do something which is very difficult. Not only difficult but, if I can do it, quite clever as well (I'm sorry if that sounds a bit like boasting because Mum says I should never boast). But this is what I'm going to try and do. I'm going to pretend that I'm not nine but EIGHTY-FOUR!! I'm going to try and think of everything which happened last night which I might still be able to remember 75 years in the future. Yes, in the year 2020. Gosh, that's a long, long way into the future. What will the world be like then? I shall be more than grown-up by that time, I shall be VERY OLD INDEED. Older than Dad and Mum are now, even. Nearly twice as old as them and THEY were born in the 19th century and so they are pretty old as well, already. I don't think I have ever met anyone over 70. But I think that a few people do live longer than that and so I am not asking you to believe the impossible.
Don't ask me why I should try and do something so difficult. I have my reasons. And I bet you are thinking that I shan't even be able to do it. Or even that it's some sort of trick.
But here goes. It's in the next post. I am sorry that nobody took pictures. Dad hasn't taken many for years. I think the film is very difficult to get.
Chris
THE STREETLY HOME GUARD BONFIRE
(Endings and Beginnings)
The fire rapidly caught, the flames licking upwards as they fed on the liberal splashing of paraffin. Dead branches and old timber planks began to spit and then crackled and flared against the darkening sky. I was beside myself with excitement. Even a small garden bonfire was a wonderful thing; but garden bonfires were never this huge and they were never lit at dusk, never, ever. I had the dimmest memory of two other large bonfires at night, one which seemed to reach to the very heavens and was accompanied by coloured fire and loud bangs which terrified me. And another, a gentler affair, when my elder sister, in her Girl Guide uniform, held my hand and deeply impressed me by explaining that this huge mound of fire would all have started from a single match. But this was happening here, and now, on a cloudless evening in early May, and I was nine and I was standing in the pasture watching it as the flames grew and grew.
On the very top of the bonfire there were two figures, so far untouched by the approaching flames. But these were no ordinary Guy Fawkes effigies. On the face of one of them had been drawn a cruel, down-turned mouth and a pair of round black spectacles behind which two slitted eyes lurked with oriental menace. But the owner of this threatening, alien face was only the supporting player in the unfolding drama. All our attention was on the other figure. It was dressed in an old Home Guard battle tunic and trousers and under the peaked cap its pillow case forehead bore an easily recognisable slick of black hair. A silly little square moustache above the scowling mouth and a familiar armband removed any possible doubt about its identity. I watched in fascination as the flames crept up towards it. A leg was the first to ignite, followed by the arms and then the whole tunic was burning and gradually the entire figure started to disappear behind a wall of flame before sliding slowly down into the very heart of the inferno. A loud cheer rang out around me. We all knew that the monster himself had probably been dead now for several wonderful days. But at that moment I was yet to learn that he had been disposed of in a similar way: splashed with the contents of a jerrican and then burnt in a shallow trench - just as we were now burning his effigy, but more completely and with far greater ceremony.
Several of my father's old Home Guard comrades were entertaining the crowd with flares and thunderflashes, old training stock which had been carefully retained when the organisation had finally been stood down a few months previously. For us children there was a table with sausage rolls and home-made biscuits and something to drink. Lemonade or ginger beer was dispensed from fat stone bottles into cups. "Drink from near the handle, dear", my mother would always whisper to me whenever I was about to imbibe in a public place. "And avoid any chips". Such advice was difficult to follow on this particular evening, since most of the cups were old and cracked and few had retained their handles. But in any case this was hardly a time for petty rules or worry about life-threatening germs.
The bonfire was now beginning to subside and was eventually little more than a large mound of glowing embers surrounded by an impenetrable wall of heat. I was standing with my father and one of his friends, Mr. Hall, as close to the fire as one could comfortably be, and we were all gazing with fascination into the furnace. At that moment a small boy of about my age, but unknown to me, tore past us between us and the fire.
"Hey, laddie" my father's friend called out in an educated voice. "Where would you be if you tripped over?"
The boy stopped and turned his face towards us, his expression containing all the contempt due to someone who not only has asked a stupid question, but also is an adult who doesn't even know how to speak proper.
"In the foire!" he replied, the intonation one of pure Brummagem; and with a final pitying look in our direction, he raced off again.
Most of the onlookers were now drifting away. We waited until the fire had died down further before finally turning our backs on it. It would gradually cool and in the morning my father and his friends would return with barrow and rake and remove the debris, amongst it Adolf's and Tojo's ashes, and return the pasture to how it was before. Of course they could not remove the circular, blackened scar but they would do what they could and then nature would take over and by the first autumn of peace it would have greened over as though nothing had ever occurred there. And as the following years and decades went by fewer and fewer people would remember the bonfire and the event it commemorated; or even, as they walked over the car park of the 1950's pub, the pasture under their feet on which it had taken place.
We were joined by my mother and Mrs. Hall as we went through the farm gate and turned right to walk along the Chester Road on which our homes stood a few hundred yards away. Past Puddepha's, the little shop on the corner of Bridle Lane where I was regularly sent to buy my father's two ounces of Gold Flake pipe tobacco or my mother's packet of Player's. Then over the mouth of Bridle Lane and past a towering, unkemt, privet hedge on the far corner behind which crouched a row of old cottages. The main road was one of the principal routes out of Birmingham to the north-west, to Holyhead, Chester and Birkenhead; but as usual at night little was moving on it. As we walked along we heard the sound of a car in the distance behind us, coming from the direction of the Hardwick Arms. As it approached, louder and louder, its headlamps illuminated the hedges of hawthorn and privet and the front gardens behind them and cast long shadows in front of us. Finally it roared past us at speed, as though it were celebrating its liberation from the black headlamp masks which had until recently allowed only the faintest of glimmers to light its path. As the single tail light faded, the only reminder of the vehicle's existence was a strange, lingering singing of the tyres as they bore it on its way towards the Parson and Clerk and the Birmingham city boundary. Now again there was utter silence, save for the noise of our footsteps on the gritty pavement. Above our heads the sky was dark. It had already transformed itself into that familiar canopy of black velvet extending from horizon to horizon, studded with pinpoints of flashing diamonds and the steadier glow of tiny pearls. No street lamp, no unending stream of traffic yet intruded upon this complete darkness, nor any longer the distant glow of a burning city. We walked past the houses of our neighbours, the Caultons, Allums, Morgans, Lyonses, Behagues, Farringtons, Parkers, Darlingtons, Prices, Milnes, Brains. Past that of our local ARP warden, Mr. Markwick, who used to erupt from the darkness like a smiling genie and gently admonish my mother for injudicious use of her flashlamp. And past houses where a son or a husband was still far away - Mr. Bacon, Mr. Woodward, Mr. Bullock, my own brother - and where perhaps there lived a young child who knew a father only from a photograph and would not recognise him on his return.
Then we stopped, for here we had to cross the road to our own house. The grown-ups continued chatting, obviously reluctant to let the evening end, as I was too. The suggestion from Mr. Hall of a nightcap resolved the matter and we continued on our way down the road. Past more houses with absent fathers, at least one of whom would never return. Halfway down the hill we turned into our friends' front drive.
Inside the house the grown-ups settled in their armchairs, the men pouring out a bottle of beer and the ladies clutching a glass of sherry, carefully preserved for just such an occasion as this. A large wireless set, for once silent, stood in the corner. I lay on the hearthrug and half listened to the conversation, not consciously telling myself, as I sometimes did, that I must always remember this moment although for some reason I always would. Nor did I ponder on the fact, of which I was well aware, that all the world's horrors had not suddenly become a thing of the past but were still alive and well, thousands of miles away.
As warmth and exhaustion started to overtake me, my mind slowly emptied itself. Tomorrow I would probably think of the delights to which I could look forward: a planned summer holiday and the sight of the sea again, now only dimly remembered after so long; and above all, some time in the now foreseeable future, the return from Italy of my elder brother whom I had not seen for over two years - ever since he walked off down the front drive that day - and was now having difficulty in visualising. But tomorrow was tomorrow and today was still today and it was very late. My parents and their friends gaily chatted away, their spirits uplifted by the thought that they too might again be permitted their own pleasures and the fulfilment of some of their hopes, after years of unrelenting worry and toil. I lay there on the soft hearthrug, still cocooned, still protected, still safe. A delicious drowsiness enveloped me. Then, as the voices faded gradually, imperceptibly, into the distance, I drifted off, off and away, into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Chris
(Endings and Beginnings)
The fire rapidly caught, the flames licking upwards as they fed on the liberal splashing of paraffin. Dead branches and old timber planks began to spit and then crackled and flared against the darkening sky. I was beside myself with excitement. Even a small garden bonfire was a wonderful thing; but garden bonfires were never this huge and they were never lit at dusk, never, ever. I had the dimmest memory of two other large bonfires at night, one which seemed to reach to the very heavens and was accompanied by coloured fire and loud bangs which terrified me. And another, a gentler affair, when my elder sister, in her Girl Guide uniform, held my hand and deeply impressed me by explaining that this huge mound of fire would all have started from a single match. But this was happening here, and now, on a cloudless evening in early May, and I was nine and I was standing in the pasture watching it as the flames grew and grew.
On the very top of the bonfire there were two figures, so far untouched by the approaching flames. But these were no ordinary Guy Fawkes effigies. On the face of one of them had been drawn a cruel, down-turned mouth and a pair of round black spectacles behind which two slitted eyes lurked with oriental menace. But the owner of this threatening, alien face was only the supporting player in the unfolding drama. All our attention was on the other figure. It was dressed in an old Home Guard battle tunic and trousers and under the peaked cap its pillow case forehead bore an easily recognisable slick of black hair. A silly little square moustache above the scowling mouth and a familiar armband removed any possible doubt about its identity. I watched in fascination as the flames crept up towards it. A leg was the first to ignite, followed by the arms and then the whole tunic was burning and gradually the entire figure started to disappear behind a wall of flame before sliding slowly down into the very heart of the inferno. A loud cheer rang out around me. We all knew that the monster himself had probably been dead now for several wonderful days. But at that moment I was yet to learn that he had been disposed of in a similar way: splashed with the contents of a jerrican and then burnt in a shallow trench - just as we were now burning his effigy, but more completely and with far greater ceremony.
Several of my father's old Home Guard comrades were entertaining the crowd with flares and thunderflashes, old training stock which had been carefully retained when the organisation had finally been stood down a few months previously. For us children there was a table with sausage rolls and home-made biscuits and something to drink. Lemonade or ginger beer was dispensed from fat stone bottles into cups. "Drink from near the handle, dear", my mother would always whisper to me whenever I was about to imbibe in a public place. "And avoid any chips". Such advice was difficult to follow on this particular evening, since most of the cups were old and cracked and few had retained their handles. But in any case this was hardly a time for petty rules or worry about life-threatening germs.
The bonfire was now beginning to subside and was eventually little more than a large mound of glowing embers surrounded by an impenetrable wall of heat. I was standing with my father and one of his friends, Mr. Hall, as close to the fire as one could comfortably be, and we were all gazing with fascination into the furnace. At that moment a small boy of about my age, but unknown to me, tore past us between us and the fire.
"Hey, laddie" my father's friend called out in an educated voice. "Where would you be if you tripped over?"
The boy stopped and turned his face towards us, his expression containing all the contempt due to someone who not only has asked a stupid question, but also is an adult who doesn't even know how to speak proper.
"In the foire!" he replied, the intonation one of pure Brummagem; and with a final pitying look in our direction, he raced off again.
Most of the onlookers were now drifting away. We waited until the fire had died down further before finally turning our backs on it. It would gradually cool and in the morning my father and his friends would return with barrow and rake and remove the debris, amongst it Adolf's and Tojo's ashes, and return the pasture to how it was before. Of course they could not remove the circular, blackened scar but they would do what they could and then nature would take over and by the first autumn of peace it would have greened over as though nothing had ever occurred there. And as the following years and decades went by fewer and fewer people would remember the bonfire and the event it commemorated; or even, as they walked over the car park of the 1950's pub, the pasture under their feet on which it had taken place.
We were joined by my mother and Mrs. Hall as we went through the farm gate and turned right to walk along the Chester Road on which our homes stood a few hundred yards away. Past Puddepha's, the little shop on the corner of Bridle Lane where I was regularly sent to buy my father's two ounces of Gold Flake pipe tobacco or my mother's packet of Player's. Then over the mouth of Bridle Lane and past a towering, unkemt, privet hedge on the far corner behind which crouched a row of old cottages. The main road was one of the principal routes out of Birmingham to the north-west, to Holyhead, Chester and Birkenhead; but as usual at night little was moving on it. As we walked along we heard the sound of a car in the distance behind us, coming from the direction of the Hardwick Arms. As it approached, louder and louder, its headlamps illuminated the hedges of hawthorn and privet and the front gardens behind them and cast long shadows in front of us. Finally it roared past us at speed, as though it were celebrating its liberation from the black headlamp masks which had until recently allowed only the faintest of glimmers to light its path. As the single tail light faded, the only reminder of the vehicle's existence was a strange, lingering singing of the tyres as they bore it on its way towards the Parson and Clerk and the Birmingham city boundary. Now again there was utter silence, save for the noise of our footsteps on the gritty pavement. Above our heads the sky was dark. It had already transformed itself into that familiar canopy of black velvet extending from horizon to horizon, studded with pinpoints of flashing diamonds and the steadier glow of tiny pearls. No street lamp, no unending stream of traffic yet intruded upon this complete darkness, nor any longer the distant glow of a burning city. We walked past the houses of our neighbours, the Caultons, Allums, Morgans, Lyonses, Behagues, Farringtons, Parkers, Darlingtons, Prices, Milnes, Brains. Past that of our local ARP warden, Mr. Markwick, who used to erupt from the darkness like a smiling genie and gently admonish my mother for injudicious use of her flashlamp. And past houses where a son or a husband was still far away - Mr. Bacon, Mr. Woodward, Mr. Bullock, my own brother - and where perhaps there lived a young child who knew a father only from a photograph and would not recognise him on his return.
Then we stopped, for here we had to cross the road to our own house. The grown-ups continued chatting, obviously reluctant to let the evening end, as I was too. The suggestion from Mr. Hall of a nightcap resolved the matter and we continued on our way down the road. Past more houses with absent fathers, at least one of whom would never return. Halfway down the hill we turned into our friends' front drive.
Inside the house the grown-ups settled in their armchairs, the men pouring out a bottle of beer and the ladies clutching a glass of sherry, carefully preserved for just such an occasion as this. A large wireless set, for once silent, stood in the corner. I lay on the hearthrug and half listened to the conversation, not consciously telling myself, as I sometimes did, that I must always remember this moment although for some reason I always would. Nor did I ponder on the fact, of which I was well aware, that all the world's horrors had not suddenly become a thing of the past but were still alive and well, thousands of miles away.
As warmth and exhaustion started to overtake me, my mind slowly emptied itself. Tomorrow I would probably think of the delights to which I could look forward: a planned summer holiday and the sight of the sea again, now only dimly remembered after so long; and above all, some time in the now foreseeable future, the return from Italy of my elder brother whom I had not seen for over two years - ever since he walked off down the front drive that day - and was now having difficulty in visualising. But tomorrow was tomorrow and today was still today and it was very late. My parents and their friends gaily chatted away, their spirits uplifted by the thought that they too might again be permitted their own pleasures and the fulfilment of some of their hopes, after years of unrelenting worry and toil. I lay there on the soft hearthrug, still cocooned, still protected, still safe. A delicious drowsiness enveloped me. Then, as the voices faded gradually, imperceptibly, into the distance, I drifted off, off and away, into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Chris
It's Tuesday, August 7th 1945. I'm now nearly nine-and-a-half.
Dad has told me something incredible today. Yesterday, the Yanks dropped a huge bomb on a Japanese town. The bomb was so big that it was about the same as all the bombs which have been dropped on Germany and Japan through the whole war. I don't know whether that is true or not. But in my mind's eye I can see hundreds, and even thousands, of Lancasters and all the bombs they are carrying. The town was called Hiroshima. They say it has been completely destroyed and most of the people in it have been killed.
I don't know what to think about this. It sounds a terrible thing. But it is just another of the dreadful things that I can remember from the newspapers ever since I learned how to read them. I can't really feel sorry for the Japs. I have never met one, obviously. But in all my nightmares they are even worse than the Germans. So frightening. So cruel. I know all this from some of the films which I have seen at the Avion in Aldridge. And so I hate them. And don't feel sorry. Dad says it will almost certainly bring an end to the war against Japan. I hope it does. That would be a really good thing. I don't know what Mum feels about all of this. She is a very kind person and is probably thinking about all the children, like me, who lived in Hiroshima.
I'm sure my brother will be pleased if the war finishes. He has moved on from Italy, now, and is in Austria. He is by a big lake where he can swim and go boating. I am not sure what he is actually doing. But I know that he is scared stiff that he and his comrades will be sent out to the Far East to start fighting again. I expect Mum and Dad have been worried about that too. Until today, that is. They must be so relieved.
I'm in South Devon at the moment, lucky me. Dad and Mum have organised a two-week holiday. We have only been here a day or two. It is four years since I was last here, when I met the evacuees from Ladywood. It was a long, long journey, which took all day. I may tell you about it all later, if you're interested. We are in a different place from before but are visiting all the places which Mum and Dad know from the past and which I can just about remember as well.
The war has had quite a big effect here. You can't really get away from it, even though everything is all so quiet and peaceful. And green. Not a bit like Brum.
Chris
Dad has told me something incredible today. Yesterday, the Yanks dropped a huge bomb on a Japanese town. The bomb was so big that it was about the same as all the bombs which have been dropped on Germany and Japan through the whole war. I don't know whether that is true or not. But in my mind's eye I can see hundreds, and even thousands, of Lancasters and all the bombs they are carrying. The town was called Hiroshima. They say it has been completely destroyed and most of the people in it have been killed.
I don't know what to think about this. It sounds a terrible thing. But it is just another of the dreadful things that I can remember from the newspapers ever since I learned how to read them. I can't really feel sorry for the Japs. I have never met one, obviously. But in all my nightmares they are even worse than the Germans. So frightening. So cruel. I know all this from some of the films which I have seen at the Avion in Aldridge. And so I hate them. And don't feel sorry. Dad says it will almost certainly bring an end to the war against Japan. I hope it does. That would be a really good thing. I don't know what Mum feels about all of this. She is a very kind person and is probably thinking about all the children, like me, who lived in Hiroshima.
I'm sure my brother will be pleased if the war finishes. He has moved on from Italy, now, and is in Austria. He is by a big lake where he can swim and go boating. I am not sure what he is actually doing. But I know that he is scared stiff that he and his comrades will be sent out to the Far East to start fighting again. I expect Mum and Dad have been worried about that too. Until today, that is. They must be so relieved.
I'm in South Devon at the moment, lucky me. Dad and Mum have organised a two-week holiday. We have only been here a day or two. It is four years since I was last here, when I met the evacuees from Ladywood. It was a long, long journey, which took all day. I may tell you about it all later, if you're interested. We are in a different place from before but are visiting all the places which Mum and Dad know from the past and which I can just about remember as well.
The war has had quite a big effect here. You can't really get away from it, even though everything is all so quiet and peaceful. And green. Not a bit like Brum.
Chris
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
Terrible thing Hiroshima. watching it on sky 174 now
Last edited:
Bob Davis
Bob Davis
Bob
Not an expert, but was surprised by what you said, the link below says it was 10% of Hiroshima:
english.alarabiya.net
Not an expert, but was surprised by what you said, the link below says it was 10% of Hiroshima:
Beirut explosion had 10 pct of Hiroshima atomic bomb’s explosive power: UK experts
The deadly explosion at the Port of Beirut had approximately 10 percent of the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
but that was a accident. not dropped on peopleBob
Not an expert, but was surprised by what you said, the link below says it was 10% of Hiroshima:
Beirut explosion had 10 pct of Hiroshima atomic bomb’s explosive power: UK experts
The deadly explosion at the Port of Beirut had approximately 10 percent of the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima
lmr3103
master brummie
I love reading your posts. You should write a book!
Lynn.
mw0njm.
A Brummie Dude
yer good idear,go for it Chris
Bob Davis
Bob Davis
Sorry. I was reading a computer generated article, my apologies everyone, I was wrong.Bob
Not an expert, but was surprised by what you said, the link below says it was 10% of Hiroshima:
Beirut explosion had 10 pct of Hiroshima atomic bomb’s explosive power: UK experts
The deadly explosion at the Port of Beirut had approximately 10 percent of the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima
Bob
(Don't encourage him, ljr3103 and mw0njm!!)
THE JOURNEY FROM STREETLY TO DEVON
It's Thursday August 9th 1945. The Japs haven't given up yet.
I said I would probably tell you a bit more about this holiday in Devon which we are having even though England is still at war. I'll start with our journey last Saturday.
I have been looking forward to the holiday ever since around VE Day when Dad said he was going to try and arrange something. It's very exciting. I can only remember one other long journey by car. That was two years ago when Dad had a business trip to South Wales and Mum and I went with him for a few days. On that journey we got stopped by a policeman who asked Dad a lot of questions about where he was going and why he was going there and how it was that he had his family in the car with him. I could see Dad getting and crosser and I was hoping and praying that he didn't really lose his temper with this policeman because policemen quite frighten me. Finally we were allowed to continue our journey and Dad spent the next few miles calming down and muttering about how that young man was at home, wasting everyone's time on things like that whilst Graham, my brother, was at the front in Italy risking his life every single day. But there were no problems like that on this journey to Devon because now you are allowed to use petrol without being checked up on.
We came down last Saturday. It is a heck of a journey. We did it in our Ford Prefect. 10 h.p., three gears, with windscreen wipers which slow right down if you are climbing a hill and a boot lid which hinges down to make a sort of shelf so that you can pile suitcases on. Dad covers them with an old Home Guard waterproof cape. We had to get up early so that we could get on the road before there was too much traffic in Birmingham. This is our car. Dad bought it in 1940.
We live the wrong side of the city for this sort of journey and so we have to go right through the middle. I know the journey from Streetly into the city very well because I often go with Mum on the No.113 Midland Red. But Dad goes a different way in the car. He says it's quicker. We go down the Chester Road from our house until we get to the Parson & Clerk pub. (That's an interesting place. It's got a big thatched building behind, but with no walls and so people can stand in it on summer evenings and drink their pints. It used to be Dad's pub but he had a row with the landlady years ago and ever since he's been going to the Hardwick. That's another story).
Anyway, by the Parson & Clerk there's a fork in the road. The bus keeps on the main road, towards Beggar's Bush and New Oscott. But Dad always turns right here and we go up over the hill and then down into Kingstanding and around the big island where all the buses are now dark blue and cream. On past Hawthorn Road and here we get on to one of those wide, modern Birmingham roads which have one road in each direction with a strip of land in the middle which they use in some parts to run trams along. No trams here in Kingstanding Road and for part of the way it's still just a single road and a wide piece of grass. It looks as though it's not quite finished but it's been like that for as long as I can remember. My cousins, Pat and Brian Summers, live in a house along here with their mum and dad, no. 664. At the bottom of the hill we join College Road, near another big pub called the Boar's Head. And that's the way we went, as usual, last Saturday. From now on we were back on the bus route. Past the end of Holford Drive which leads to the big factory where Dad works (and where my sister has recently started) - did he give it a glance as he drove past at the beginning of his fortnight's holiday? And into Perry Barr. We were starting to really get into the city now. It got more and more built up and soon we were going along Summer Lane, then Constitution Hill, Snow Hill, Colmore Row and we threaded our way around the Town Hall, through more streets, and eventually found ourselves in Bristol Street.
I was sitting in the back with the dog (who I'm going to call Rex although that's not his real name) and I was looking out at the traffic and all the people and the big gaps in so many places, on the main roads and down the little streets which run off them. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. Open spaces, sometimes piled up with rubble but many with greenery and clumps of mauve willowherb growing on them. It makes you wonder where all the seeds come from, right in the middle of a big city. Very often there's a towering wall with great pieces of timber holding it up because the building next to it which used to support it has gone, totally disappeared. On some of these walls are little fireplaces, at different levels right up to the top and perhaps a square of patterned wallpaper still sticking to the wall, where a room used to be. And some of the buildings which are still standing are wrecked and boarded up and unused. I suppose it will all get mended and rebuilt, eventually, now that the war is just about over. But it will take ages and I don't know when. I shall probably be grown up by then.
Over the last few weeks I have started to see as well, down some of these side streets, a house, here and there, all decorated with coloured chalk and streamers and Union Jacks and messages which say something like "WELCOME HOME, JACK". Or Frank or Ron or Sid or Fred. Not too many, yet. Perhaps these are mainly the soldiers who have been prisoners of war, held in Germany and Poland for years and years, and they are now back with their families. Most of the other soldiers still have plenty to do in Germany and Italy and other places before they are allowed to come home. When they do it's called "being demobbed". That's a funny word. Dad says it's short for "demobilised". And of course the soldiers who have no chance of coming home yet are all those who are out East, in India, Burma, Malaya and other places. Many have been there for years and years, fighting in the jungle, wading through rivers - everything looks hot and wet and horrid when you see it on the newsreels. And frightening, with a Jap soldier hiding somewhere in the undergrowth, ready to jump out at you with his bayonet. Not to speak of all the insects and snakes and things. It's all horrible and you can hardly imagine what it's like to be there. No wonder my brother is scared about having to go. Austria is much nicer. All those soldiers are stuck out there, day after day, being killed or injured until it's all over. I wonder when they will ever get home. Mr. Bullock, a neighbour of ours, is there. And the dad of one of my friends - if he is still alive - is a prisoner-of-war of the Japs. And now, even after the bomb, the war is still going on. WHEN will they decide to give up?
Anyway, Mum, Dad, Rex and me, there we were, not in the jungle at that moment. We were in Bristol Street in all the traffic, but at least with the centre of the city behind us. Down some of the sidestreets you could still see wrecked houses and what was left of other bigger buildings. And sometimes, just wide open spaces covered in weeds and piles of rubble. Onward into Bristol Road. Now we could really start getting on with our long journey.
As we went down the Bristol Road I saw the big house which Uncle Ferdo and Auntie Dickie live in. They are Mr. and Mrs. Cole. It's either No. 88 or 188, I think. They are well-off and they own another house near Bromyard, a cottage in the countryside. We have had holidays there with them. There's no electricity and water comes from a pump outside the kitchen door. Mum and I go on buses from home to get to the big house there in the Bristol Road. Then we go off in one of their cars. So far there has been a big Hillman with a hood which no one would put down, even though I asked ever so nicely. I was very disappointed. Another time it was an Austin. But just once it was one of Uncle Ferdo's company vans. It was a ROLLS-ROYCE. Yes, a Rolls-Royce van! I sat in the front with the driver. He had a delivery to make in Bromyard, somewhere. I was supposed to be "the driver's boy" in case we got stopped, Mum and Auntie sat in the back of the van, in little chairs, surrounded by the luggage and keeping an eye on the parrot and the cockatoo in their cages. They had to cling on to the cages when we went round corners, to stop them sliding around. (That's Mum and Auntie, not the parrot and the cockatoo - although the birds probably had to do that as well). They both did a lot of laughing. I don't know why. But we didn't get stopped by a policeman.
(go to next post)
THE JOURNEY FROM STREETLY TO DEVON
It's Thursday August 9th 1945. The Japs haven't given up yet.
I said I would probably tell you a bit more about this holiday in Devon which we are having even though England is still at war. I'll start with our journey last Saturday.
I have been looking forward to the holiday ever since around VE Day when Dad said he was going to try and arrange something. It's very exciting. I can only remember one other long journey by car. That was two years ago when Dad had a business trip to South Wales and Mum and I went with him for a few days. On that journey we got stopped by a policeman who asked Dad a lot of questions about where he was going and why he was going there and how it was that he had his family in the car with him. I could see Dad getting and crosser and I was hoping and praying that he didn't really lose his temper with this policeman because policemen quite frighten me. Finally we were allowed to continue our journey and Dad spent the next few miles calming down and muttering about how that young man was at home, wasting everyone's time on things like that whilst Graham, my brother, was at the front in Italy risking his life every single day. But there were no problems like that on this journey to Devon because now you are allowed to use petrol without being checked up on.
We came down last Saturday. It is a heck of a journey. We did it in our Ford Prefect. 10 h.p., three gears, with windscreen wipers which slow right down if you are climbing a hill and a boot lid which hinges down to make a sort of shelf so that you can pile suitcases on. Dad covers them with an old Home Guard waterproof cape. We had to get up early so that we could get on the road before there was too much traffic in Birmingham. This is our car. Dad bought it in 1940.
We live the wrong side of the city for this sort of journey and so we have to go right through the middle. I know the journey from Streetly into the city very well because I often go with Mum on the No.113 Midland Red. But Dad goes a different way in the car. He says it's quicker. We go down the Chester Road from our house until we get to the Parson & Clerk pub. (That's an interesting place. It's got a big thatched building behind, but with no walls and so people can stand in it on summer evenings and drink their pints. It used to be Dad's pub but he had a row with the landlady years ago and ever since he's been going to the Hardwick. That's another story).
Anyway, by the Parson & Clerk there's a fork in the road. The bus keeps on the main road, towards Beggar's Bush and New Oscott. But Dad always turns right here and we go up over the hill and then down into Kingstanding and around the big island where all the buses are now dark blue and cream. On past Hawthorn Road and here we get on to one of those wide, modern Birmingham roads which have one road in each direction with a strip of land in the middle which they use in some parts to run trams along. No trams here in Kingstanding Road and for part of the way it's still just a single road and a wide piece of grass. It looks as though it's not quite finished but it's been like that for as long as I can remember. My cousins, Pat and Brian Summers, live in a house along here with their mum and dad, no. 664. At the bottom of the hill we join College Road, near another big pub called the Boar's Head. And that's the way we went, as usual, last Saturday. From now on we were back on the bus route. Past the end of Holford Drive which leads to the big factory where Dad works (and where my sister has recently started) - did he give it a glance as he drove past at the beginning of his fortnight's holiday? And into Perry Barr. We were starting to really get into the city now. It got more and more built up and soon we were going along Summer Lane, then Constitution Hill, Snow Hill, Colmore Row and we threaded our way around the Town Hall, through more streets, and eventually found ourselves in Bristol Street.
I was sitting in the back with the dog (who I'm going to call Rex although that's not his real name) and I was looking out at the traffic and all the people and the big gaps in so many places, on the main roads and down the little streets which run off them. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. Open spaces, sometimes piled up with rubble but many with greenery and clumps of mauve willowherb growing on them. It makes you wonder where all the seeds come from, right in the middle of a big city. Very often there's a towering wall with great pieces of timber holding it up because the building next to it which used to support it has gone, totally disappeared. On some of these walls are little fireplaces, at different levels right up to the top and perhaps a square of patterned wallpaper still sticking to the wall, where a room used to be. And some of the buildings which are still standing are wrecked and boarded up and unused. I suppose it will all get mended and rebuilt, eventually, now that the war is just about over. But it will take ages and I don't know when. I shall probably be grown up by then.
Over the last few weeks I have started to see as well, down some of these side streets, a house, here and there, all decorated with coloured chalk and streamers and Union Jacks and messages which say something like "WELCOME HOME, JACK". Or Frank or Ron or Sid or Fred. Not too many, yet. Perhaps these are mainly the soldiers who have been prisoners of war, held in Germany and Poland for years and years, and they are now back with their families. Most of the other soldiers still have plenty to do in Germany and Italy and other places before they are allowed to come home. When they do it's called "being demobbed". That's a funny word. Dad says it's short for "demobilised". And of course the soldiers who have no chance of coming home yet are all those who are out East, in India, Burma, Malaya and other places. Many have been there for years and years, fighting in the jungle, wading through rivers - everything looks hot and wet and horrid when you see it on the newsreels. And frightening, with a Jap soldier hiding somewhere in the undergrowth, ready to jump out at you with his bayonet. Not to speak of all the insects and snakes and things. It's all horrible and you can hardly imagine what it's like to be there. No wonder my brother is scared about having to go. Austria is much nicer. All those soldiers are stuck out there, day after day, being killed or injured until it's all over. I wonder when they will ever get home. Mr. Bullock, a neighbour of ours, is there. And the dad of one of my friends - if he is still alive - is a prisoner-of-war of the Japs. And now, even after the bomb, the war is still going on. WHEN will they decide to give up?
Anyway, Mum, Dad, Rex and me, there we were, not in the jungle at that moment. We were in Bristol Street in all the traffic, but at least with the centre of the city behind us. Down some of the sidestreets you could still see wrecked houses and what was left of other bigger buildings. And sometimes, just wide open spaces covered in weeds and piles of rubble. Onward into Bristol Road. Now we could really start getting on with our long journey.
As we went down the Bristol Road I saw the big house which Uncle Ferdo and Auntie Dickie live in. They are Mr. and Mrs. Cole. It's either No. 88 or 188, I think. They are well-off and they own another house near Bromyard, a cottage in the countryside. We have had holidays there with them. There's no electricity and water comes from a pump outside the kitchen door. Mum and I go on buses from home to get to the big house there in the Bristol Road. Then we go off in one of their cars. So far there has been a big Hillman with a hood which no one would put down, even though I asked ever so nicely. I was very disappointed. Another time it was an Austin. But just once it was one of Uncle Ferdo's company vans. It was a ROLLS-ROYCE. Yes, a Rolls-Royce van! I sat in the front with the driver. He had a delivery to make in Bromyard, somewhere. I was supposed to be "the driver's boy" in case we got stopped, Mum and Auntie sat in the back of the van, in little chairs, surrounded by the luggage and keeping an eye on the parrot and the cockatoo in their cages. They had to cling on to the cages when we went round corners, to stop them sliding around. (That's Mum and Auntie, not the parrot and the cockatoo - although the birds probably had to do that as well). They both did a lot of laughing. I don't know why. But we didn't get stopped by a policeman.
(go to next post)
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Anyway, that was year or two ago. There we were last Saturday morning, the city was starting to fade away. Through Selly Oak where Dad and Mum first lived, in digs, when they were married in 1921. Dad was working at Elliotts, then. That was before they moved to Erdington. And we found ourselves back on one of those modern double roads, this time with trams running down gap in the middle. At long last, Dad could start to put his foot down a bit.
Dad said later that it's not a good start, having to go through the middle of Birmingham. But it didn't get much better for the whole journey. We went down the A38 road which takes you right through the middle of Droitwich, Bromsgrove, Worcester, Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Bristol, Bridgwater and Taunton. Right down the main street in all of these towns. It isn't until you get to Exeter that you can drive on something called a bypass. Then after that, it's the middle of Newton Abbott, Totnes and Kingsbridge. You can look into all the shop windows as you crawl past.
I found it all interesting though, looking out at different towns and countryside passing by the window. I had a special job during the journey. I had a notebook and, on the dot, every hour, Dad told me how many miles we had covered. I made a note of it. I liked to do it and he liked to check on progress because he knew he had over 200 miles to go. The first hour wasn't very good because of Birmingham. We probably only did about 20 miles. It got a bit better after that and I think the record for one hour was 35 miles. I would peer at the speedometer from my position in the back of the car from time to time. The needle swishes about a bit in our car but you can work out roughly what speed we are doing. When I could see it up at about 45 I knew that we are really humming along. But that of course was only on the open road between all the towns.
The journey went on and on although I never really got bored. There was always something to look at. And every hour there was the excitement of seeing how far we had got. Dad started to suffer with his neck as the day went on. He likes to dress properly for any journey and so he wears a stiff collar just like when he goes to work. He drives with his head tilted a little bit back so that he is looking out through the bottom half of his glasses. So eventually the back of his neck got very sore where it was rubbing against the starched collar.
We stopped from time to time. We had one longish stop for lunch when we turned off the main road into a little lane. There we had our sandwiches. It was a quiet place and and when we stopped munching you would hear the silence. All I could hear was Mum's faint wheezing. Mum's breathing is always a bit wheezy. It's because of the Players. But at least she doesn't normally smoke in the car which I'm glad about. Dad lights his pipe occasionally but I don't mind the smell of that. On other occasions Dad would get out to stretch his legs, or perhaps put some petrol in the car. And then, "All ready?" and off we would go again.
It's a pity that Dad didn't take any pictures of our journey. He was too busy and anyway, Mum always calls taking a picture a bit of a palaver. And it really is. I've told you about that before (have a look at post no. 16). And film is very difficult to get and it's expensive. So the only pictures I have of our adventure are those I have in my mind. But he's got his camera with him for this holiday.
The final few miles of the journey were a bit difficult. We were going to a slightly different place from before the war which Dad didn't know so well and not all the signposts had yet been put back. (They had been taken down years ago, in case the Germans came). So it was a bit of a struggle and I expect he was tired - or had even forgotten which narrow little lane went where. But then, finally, he worked it out from his pre-war map and followed his nose and we found the village we were looking for. We parked on a little triangle of grass right in the centre, breathed a sigh of relief, switched off and looked around. The shadows were starting to lengthen. Silence. A bit of woodsmoke from the chimney of the one of the cottages near to us. It was a tiny shop and Post Office. Nothing was stirring anywhere although we had probably been noticed. So this was Beeson, almost all of it, and we were having our very first sight of it, on Saturday evening, August 4th 1945.
We found that our cottage was only a few yards down the lane. We went through the front gate with Dad struggling with the suitcases, knocked on the door and received the warmest of welcomes. Our holiday had started. But poor Dad. All he ended up with was a sore neck and a raging thirst in a village which was too tiny to have its own pub. But I think he slept well that night and he has been very cheerful ever since. I think he is enjoying his holiday and he is doing his best to make sure Mum and I are enjoying ourselves as well. As he always does.
Mum has now started to call the tiny Post Office "Mount Pleasant". This is a joke because Mount Pleasant is the main Post Office in London.
I'll show you the cottage where we are.
And I'll tell you more about it all in the next few days, of where we are and what we have been doing.
I bet you can hardly wait.
Chris
PS The Japs still haven't given up, even though the bomb was on Monday and it's now Thursday.
Dad said later that it's not a good start, having to go through the middle of Birmingham. But it didn't get much better for the whole journey. We went down the A38 road which takes you right through the middle of Droitwich, Bromsgrove, Worcester, Tewkesbury, Gloucester, Bristol, Bridgwater and Taunton. Right down the main street in all of these towns. It isn't until you get to Exeter that you can drive on something called a bypass. Then after that, it's the middle of Newton Abbott, Totnes and Kingsbridge. You can look into all the shop windows as you crawl past.
I found it all interesting though, looking out at different towns and countryside passing by the window. I had a special job during the journey. I had a notebook and, on the dot, every hour, Dad told me how many miles we had covered. I made a note of it. I liked to do it and he liked to check on progress because he knew he had over 200 miles to go. The first hour wasn't very good because of Birmingham. We probably only did about 20 miles. It got a bit better after that and I think the record for one hour was 35 miles. I would peer at the speedometer from my position in the back of the car from time to time. The needle swishes about a bit in our car but you can work out roughly what speed we are doing. When I could see it up at about 45 I knew that we are really humming along. But that of course was only on the open road between all the towns.
The journey went on and on although I never really got bored. There was always something to look at. And every hour there was the excitement of seeing how far we had got. Dad started to suffer with his neck as the day went on. He likes to dress properly for any journey and so he wears a stiff collar just like when he goes to work. He drives with his head tilted a little bit back so that he is looking out through the bottom half of his glasses. So eventually the back of his neck got very sore where it was rubbing against the starched collar.
We stopped from time to time. We had one longish stop for lunch when we turned off the main road into a little lane. There we had our sandwiches. It was a quiet place and and when we stopped munching you would hear the silence. All I could hear was Mum's faint wheezing. Mum's breathing is always a bit wheezy. It's because of the Players. But at least she doesn't normally smoke in the car which I'm glad about. Dad lights his pipe occasionally but I don't mind the smell of that. On other occasions Dad would get out to stretch his legs, or perhaps put some petrol in the car. And then, "All ready?" and off we would go again.
It's a pity that Dad didn't take any pictures of our journey. He was too busy and anyway, Mum always calls taking a picture a bit of a palaver. And it really is. I've told you about that before (have a look at post no. 16). And film is very difficult to get and it's expensive. So the only pictures I have of our adventure are those I have in my mind. But he's got his camera with him for this holiday.
The final few miles of the journey were a bit difficult. We were going to a slightly different place from before the war which Dad didn't know so well and not all the signposts had yet been put back. (They had been taken down years ago, in case the Germans came). So it was a bit of a struggle and I expect he was tired - or had even forgotten which narrow little lane went where. But then, finally, he worked it out from his pre-war map and followed his nose and we found the village we were looking for. We parked on a little triangle of grass right in the centre, breathed a sigh of relief, switched off and looked around. The shadows were starting to lengthen. Silence. A bit of woodsmoke from the chimney of the one of the cottages near to us. It was a tiny shop and Post Office. Nothing was stirring anywhere although we had probably been noticed. So this was Beeson, almost all of it, and we were having our very first sight of it, on Saturday evening, August 4th 1945.
We found that our cottage was only a few yards down the lane. We went through the front gate with Dad struggling with the suitcases, knocked on the door and received the warmest of welcomes. Our holiday had started. But poor Dad. All he ended up with was a sore neck and a raging thirst in a village which was too tiny to have its own pub. But I think he slept well that night and he has been very cheerful ever since. I think he is enjoying his holiday and he is doing his best to make sure Mum and I are enjoying ourselves as well. As he always does.
Mum has now started to call the tiny Post Office "Mount Pleasant". This is a joke because Mount Pleasant is the main Post Office in London.
I'll show you the cottage where we are.
And I'll tell you more about it all in the next few days, of where we are and what we have been doing.
I bet you can hardly wait.
Chris
PS The Japs still haven't given up, even though the bomb was on Monday and it's now Thursday.
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Saturday 11th August 1945
Well, there has been another one. The day before yesterday. It was a place called Nagasaki. I have never heard of it before. Nor Hiroshima, come to that. The only place in Japan I have ever known about is Tokyo. That's the capital. To me, it's all as far away as the moon.
Dad says that the Japs can't possibly carry on after this. So it looks as though the war is nearly over.
Anyway, that's a long, long way away. I promised to tell you more about where we are and what we are doing. You might ask "What's all that got to do with Birmingham?" I would say, only a bit, really. But we are Brummies, even though we are here in Devon, Dad says that he always bumps into a lot when he's here on holiday - and I have met THREE myself! (Not this time, though. That was four years ago when, somehow or other, dad got us down here to stay in the farm which he and all of us had gone to for years before the war. These three Brummies were brothers. The youngest was about my age. They were evacuees. They came from a part of Birmingham called Ladywood. I had never heard of that before. It sounded a lovely place. I could see in my mind pretty ladies in coloured dresses, sitting around on the grass in a clearing, the sun shining and dense, green woodland all around them. I wonder if they have gone home yet. They can't still be at the farm and I'll tell you why another time).
And, oh yes, I remember now, there has been a gentleman and his wife who Dad and Mum got talking to. I'm not sure where in Birmingham they come from. It's their first visit. The lady said she liked Devon but couldn't stand "all them high hedges". They stopped her seeing the scenery. Mum and Dad had a chuckle about this afterwards. I think what they like as much as anything ARE the hedgerows!
Beeson, where we are, is a tiny village, about a mile from the sea. This is almost all of it.
We are in the cottage right in the middle of the picture. Our rooms are on the right-hand side. The bedroom, where I sleep with Mum and Dad (on a little camp bed) is the top window. Below, the window of our sitting and dining room.
It's a super place. In the garden there are flowers and vegetables and a lovely row of sweet peas which Mrs. H. cuts for the house. There is also a bush with huge fruit on it which I've never heard of before, it's called a loganberry. Dad says it's half way between a rasberry and a strawberry.
The food is lovely. I have had fresh crab for the first time and love it. We also have chicken, fish and all sorts of other things. And loads of Devonshire cream. Mrs H. has a big bowl on her scullery floor which she makes it in. The crabs are absolutely huge. I think they are called King Crabs and they all come from a village about a mile away.
This is a picture of our village from the other direction, with the back of our cottage near to us, on the right-hand side.
You can see that there aren't many houses. Opposite us are the gardens of some other cottages and they all seem to me so lush, everything packed closely together, rows of peas and beans and carrots and cauliflowers and other nice things. The cottage we are in is part of a farm which you can't see on the picture. You get to it either down a little lane or through a gate by the back door of our cottage. They have cows and grow a lot of corn. Mr. H. is one of the farmer's sons. He has a brother, John. And sisters. I think they still live at the farm with the mum and dad. Also on the farm is a German prisoner of war. I think he is a nice man but I've never met him. I've seen him working away, in the distance, with his blond hair and looking as brown has a berry. I don't know his name. I wonder if he is happy and when he'll be able to go home.
I think Mr. H. had been in the Army. There's a picture of him on the wall, in a great big greatcoat and looking a bit sad. But he's home now.
If you walk along the lane in the direction we are looking, for about twenty minutes, you go along a flattish bit first of all and then the lane suddenly dives down, ever so steeply, going round one or two very sharp hairpins until you reach sea level. (There is a very sharp bend, just like these, in the middle of Beeson. That one got made a bit less sharp by the Americans when they were here. They couldn't get their big Army lorries around it. But it looks as though they had to put up with these, further on towards Beesands).
After the bends and the road has flattened out, it's just a few yards to the village of Beesands. This is a sleepy little place which is just a long row of fishermen's cottages with the front doors straight onto the road. On the other side of the road the shingle starts and then slopes right down to the water. The men here all fish for crabs. They have open boats for one or two people with an engine in. You can see their round crabpots all over the place. And lines of bait drying and waiting to be used. At first you wonder how they get these heavy boats out of the sea and up the beach. The answer is a lot of chains and, all along the beach, little tiny sheds which aren't much more than big boxes. I've had a look in one of these. Inside was a very old car engine. When they start it up, the engine drives a big drum which one of the chains is attached to and as it goes round and round, it pulls the boat up the beach. It all looks very clever to me. But a bit rusty.
This is a picture of Beesands. It's a pity you can't see much of the beach and the boats and all the other stuff.
Halfway down the row of cottages is a pub, called The Cricket. It's small and everybody crowds into the bar. I expect it is busier than usual with the visitors, which include my mum and dad quite regularly! I sit outside with a glass of lemonade and a packet of Smith's crisps with its little blue bag of salt. (Children can't go into pubs, of course). I'm quite happy. There's plenty to look at and especially the sea. As you look out in that direction, to the right, around the headland, is another village called Hallsands. And, to the left, at the far end of the long beach and around another headland, the village of Torcross and beyond it Slapton Sands. I'll probably tell you later about what I saw in both these places. But let's stay in Beesands for a moment. It's so quiet and peaceful, especially in the evening, and you think that nothing could ever happen here. But then, almost next door to the pub, you see there is a big gap in the row of cottages. And a wrecked cottage where there's a large car parked. I think it's the local taxi. Bombing didn't just happen in Birmingham. It happened here. One day a plane came and dropped a bomb, just here. At least one cottage was destroyed and a person killed. We sometimes see walking along the lanes, being helped by a member of his family, an elderly gentleman (well, he looks elderly to me) who is blind. I think he lost his sight when the bomb fell. Dad offered him a lift one day but he said, no thank you, he enjoyed walking.
And we do, as well. Dad never takes the car down to Beesands. We always walk. Going is okay. But coming back is hard work. The lane is so steep that I wonder if our car would ever get up it. (Dad sometimes tells me the story about a place called Clovelly where, when he was there years and years ago, the road was so steep that some cars had to reverse up it because they couldn't get up it going forwards. I wonder if any of them belonged to Brummies). Our lane isn't quite as bad as that, but you never know!
But the coming back, even though the hill is so steep, is nice. That sometimes happens at dusk. We will have gone to The Cricket after supper. As you climb the hill you can still hear the waves breaking on the beach behind you, and, if you listen carefully enough, you might even hear the hiss of the shingle as the water flows back after it. Gradually that all fades. Then there's almost nothing apart from ourfootsteps. Just some clicking in the hedgerow as a grasshopper or cricket gets ready for bed after a busy day amongst the hawthorn and the hazel. The scent of honeysuckle hits you as it gets stronger in the evening air. And the hedgerow starts to show pinpoints of light as the glowworms become visible. There are a couple of cottages, further on, and you can usually get a whiff of wood smoke as you walk past. It's a lovely smell. I think that the people who live there use wood for cooking. They certainly don't need it for heating, on an evening like this.
Then back into the cottage. The door is never locked. There's a light on. (We have electricity here. And a proper bathroom). I'm worn out. The heat, the exercise, the fresh air. So straight up to bed whilst Mum and Dad have the last natter of the day downstairs. I'll be fast asleep before they come up.
I do like holidays.
Chris
Well, there has been another one. The day before yesterday. It was a place called Nagasaki. I have never heard of it before. Nor Hiroshima, come to that. The only place in Japan I have ever known about is Tokyo. That's the capital. To me, it's all as far away as the moon.
Dad says that the Japs can't possibly carry on after this. So it looks as though the war is nearly over.
Anyway, that's a long, long way away. I promised to tell you more about where we are and what we are doing. You might ask "What's all that got to do with Birmingham?" I would say, only a bit, really. But we are Brummies, even though we are here in Devon, Dad says that he always bumps into a lot when he's here on holiday - and I have met THREE myself! (Not this time, though. That was four years ago when, somehow or other, dad got us down here to stay in the farm which he and all of us had gone to for years before the war. These three Brummies were brothers. The youngest was about my age. They were evacuees. They came from a part of Birmingham called Ladywood. I had never heard of that before. It sounded a lovely place. I could see in my mind pretty ladies in coloured dresses, sitting around on the grass in a clearing, the sun shining and dense, green woodland all around them. I wonder if they have gone home yet. They can't still be at the farm and I'll tell you why another time).
And, oh yes, I remember now, there has been a gentleman and his wife who Dad and Mum got talking to. I'm not sure where in Birmingham they come from. It's their first visit. The lady said she liked Devon but couldn't stand "all them high hedges". They stopped her seeing the scenery. Mum and Dad had a chuckle about this afterwards. I think what they like as much as anything ARE the hedgerows!
Beeson, where we are, is a tiny village, about a mile from the sea. This is almost all of it.
We are in the cottage right in the middle of the picture. Our rooms are on the right-hand side. The bedroom, where I sleep with Mum and Dad (on a little camp bed) is the top window. Below, the window of our sitting and dining room.
It's a super place. In the garden there are flowers and vegetables and a lovely row of sweet peas which Mrs. H. cuts for the house. There is also a bush with huge fruit on it which I've never heard of before, it's called a loganberry. Dad says it's half way between a rasberry and a strawberry.
The food is lovely. I have had fresh crab for the first time and love it. We also have chicken, fish and all sorts of other things. And loads of Devonshire cream. Mrs H. has a big bowl on her scullery floor which she makes it in. The crabs are absolutely huge. I think they are called King Crabs and they all come from a village about a mile away.
This is a picture of our village from the other direction, with the back of our cottage near to us, on the right-hand side.
You can see that there aren't many houses. Opposite us are the gardens of some other cottages and they all seem to me so lush, everything packed closely together, rows of peas and beans and carrots and cauliflowers and other nice things. The cottage we are in is part of a farm which you can't see on the picture. You get to it either down a little lane or through a gate by the back door of our cottage. They have cows and grow a lot of corn. Mr. H. is one of the farmer's sons. He has a brother, John. And sisters. I think they still live at the farm with the mum and dad. Also on the farm is a German prisoner of war. I think he is a nice man but I've never met him. I've seen him working away, in the distance, with his blond hair and looking as brown has a berry. I don't know his name. I wonder if he is happy and when he'll be able to go home.
I think Mr. H. had been in the Army. There's a picture of him on the wall, in a great big greatcoat and looking a bit sad. But he's home now.
If you walk along the lane in the direction we are looking, for about twenty minutes, you go along a flattish bit first of all and then the lane suddenly dives down, ever so steeply, going round one or two very sharp hairpins until you reach sea level. (There is a very sharp bend, just like these, in the middle of Beeson. That one got made a bit less sharp by the Americans when they were here. They couldn't get their big Army lorries around it. But it looks as though they had to put up with these, further on towards Beesands).
After the bends and the road has flattened out, it's just a few yards to the village of Beesands. This is a sleepy little place which is just a long row of fishermen's cottages with the front doors straight onto the road. On the other side of the road the shingle starts and then slopes right down to the water. The men here all fish for crabs. They have open boats for one or two people with an engine in. You can see their round crabpots all over the place. And lines of bait drying and waiting to be used. At first you wonder how they get these heavy boats out of the sea and up the beach. The answer is a lot of chains and, all along the beach, little tiny sheds which aren't much more than big boxes. I've had a look in one of these. Inside was a very old car engine. When they start it up, the engine drives a big drum which one of the chains is attached to and as it goes round and round, it pulls the boat up the beach. It all looks very clever to me. But a bit rusty.
This is a picture of Beesands. It's a pity you can't see much of the beach and the boats and all the other stuff.
Halfway down the row of cottages is a pub, called The Cricket. It's small and everybody crowds into the bar. I expect it is busier than usual with the visitors, which include my mum and dad quite regularly! I sit outside with a glass of lemonade and a packet of Smith's crisps with its little blue bag of salt. (Children can't go into pubs, of course). I'm quite happy. There's plenty to look at and especially the sea. As you look out in that direction, to the right, around the headland, is another village called Hallsands. And, to the left, at the far end of the long beach and around another headland, the village of Torcross and beyond it Slapton Sands. I'll probably tell you later about what I saw in both these places. But let's stay in Beesands for a moment. It's so quiet and peaceful, especially in the evening, and you think that nothing could ever happen here. But then, almost next door to the pub, you see there is a big gap in the row of cottages. And a wrecked cottage where there's a large car parked. I think it's the local taxi. Bombing didn't just happen in Birmingham. It happened here. One day a plane came and dropped a bomb, just here. At least one cottage was destroyed and a person killed. We sometimes see walking along the lanes, being helped by a member of his family, an elderly gentleman (well, he looks elderly to me) who is blind. I think he lost his sight when the bomb fell. Dad offered him a lift one day but he said, no thank you, he enjoyed walking.
And we do, as well. Dad never takes the car down to Beesands. We always walk. Going is okay. But coming back is hard work. The lane is so steep that I wonder if our car would ever get up it. (Dad sometimes tells me the story about a place called Clovelly where, when he was there years and years ago, the road was so steep that some cars had to reverse up it because they couldn't get up it going forwards. I wonder if any of them belonged to Brummies). Our lane isn't quite as bad as that, but you never know!
But the coming back, even though the hill is so steep, is nice. That sometimes happens at dusk. We will have gone to The Cricket after supper. As you climb the hill you can still hear the waves breaking on the beach behind you, and, if you listen carefully enough, you might even hear the hiss of the shingle as the water flows back after it. Gradually that all fades. Then there's almost nothing apart from ourfootsteps. Just some clicking in the hedgerow as a grasshopper or cricket gets ready for bed after a busy day amongst the hawthorn and the hazel. The scent of honeysuckle hits you as it gets stronger in the evening air. And the hedgerow starts to show pinpoints of light as the glowworms become visible. There are a couple of cottages, further on, and you can usually get a whiff of wood smoke as you walk past. It's a lovely smell. I think that the people who live there use wood for cooking. They certainly don't need it for heating, on an evening like this.
Then back into the cottage. The door is never locked. There's a light on. (We have electricity here. And a proper bathroom). I'm worn out. The heat, the exercise, the fresh air. So straight up to bed whilst Mum and Dad have the last natter of the day downstairs. I'll be fast asleep before they come up.
I do like holidays.
Chris
lmr3103
master brummie
More when you get chance please!! Lynn.
