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The True Horrors Of Ww2

i saw that one alberta..as you say very moving...i recently posted on another thread about about the astle family from guildford st...mom..nan and 6 children all lost their lives..i shall talking soon to my aunt joyce who was born in 1930 and has memories of growing up during ww2...like our mom she lived in paddington st which was next to guildford st...will be writing down her memories...

lyn
Hi All,
I too watched this program and, as a young teenager throughout the war, I was very disappointed in it. It included Coventry to a great extent and that was a seperate issue in that it suffered greatly in one attack whilst Birmingham was attacked many times over a period of months. Also I thought that David Harewood was a poor choice for presenter He was born well after the war and his parents did not arrive here until 1960 so they did not have any memories of the blitz to pass on to him. Someone like Carl Chinn was needed.
Old Boy
 
When I started school I was one of five children in the class that had new parents. I also lost three Grand Parents.
I think we were all too young to fully realise what had happened. I had fantastic adoptive parents, brought up strictly as an only child but surround by love and care. Only one boy out of the five of us seemed to have problems and he moved school.
Best wishes...Gerald
Garden Gerald.
 
hello gerald..firstly i am so sorry that your loss was so great but so pleased that your adoptive parents gave you what basically is all any child needs and that is love and care...

thanks for sharing that with us

lyn
 
I notice earlier in the thread mention of bombing in Hunters Vale. Two photos below show houses and a small factory badly damaged in wartime Hunters Vale.
Hunters_Vale 1940.jpg
HuntersValeBomb.jpg
from 'shoothill'
 
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Hello everyone and thank you for this thread. For sharing all these memories, some of them so sad. My Mom who passed away in November was working at Standards in Coventry all through the war. She was not a highly emotional woman ( I'm not sure anyone was allowed to be!) but any mention of the war and the blitz could make her fill up. I'm wondering if anyone on here has specific memories of Small Heath at that time? I'm especially interested to know anything anyone remembers about communal shelters - how many were there for instance? Peter Docherty remembers one near to where he lived in Herbert Road. Also ARP posts - I'm planning to write something based on the ARP so anything in that area would be interesting. Memories of wardens etc. Or any other details all of interest. For example, I know Queen's Gravy Salts was bombed. Had they just carried on making the same stuff?
All best everyone - Annie.
 
Annie, apart from surface shelters ( which I would not like to be in if it took a direct hit) you had firms/companies who allowed the public in during raids, my Nan who lived in Queens Rd Aston regularly went down Atkinson's brewery cellars rather than the Anderson shelter in her garden opposite the brewery. I did go in a surface shelter once, near Lewis's in town during a rare daylight raid whist shopping with my Mom and sisters about 1940, I was 10 at the time, I remember it was fairly dark and damp with long wooden benches, quite an adventure for us children not understanding the dangers. Eric
 
Hello everyone and thank you for this thread. For sharing all these memories, some of them so sad. My Mom who passed away in November was working at Standards in Coventry all through the war. She was not a highly emotional woman ( I'm not sure anyone was allowed to be!) but any mention of the war and the blitz could make her fill up. I'm wondering if anyone on here has specific memories of Small Heath at that time? I'm especially interested to know anything anyone remembers about communal shelters - how many were there for instance? Peter Docherty remembers one near to where he lived in Herbert Road. Also ARP posts - I'm planning to write something based on the ARP so anything in that area would be interesting. Memories of wardens etc. Or any other details all of interest. For example, I know Queen's Gravy Salts was bombed. Had they just carried on making the same stuff?
All best everyone - Annie.
Some thread links below with pictures and memories of those times if you haven't already seen them.
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/air-raid-shelters.35513/
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/the-blitz.3210/
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/bombing-brum.21044/
A brief comment about Queens Gravy Salts bombing mentioned here
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/for...golden-hillock-road-school.43907/#post-525020
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/golden-hillock-road-school.43907/
 
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As a nipper 8 in 1941 WW2 was like a game, almost a bad very bad dream. One bomb missed us by a few feet. but in true English fashion, we carried on with a stiff upper lip. How close, to not been here writing this today
 

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very close old brit...ive read a lot of peoples memories about the bombs dropping and most of them said the most scary thing was not knowng just where they would land...it was a lottery really

lyn
 
Well obviously the Luftwaffe, like the RAF had specific preplanned targets but bombing accuracy was far from a fine art in the early days and the blackout made it even more difficult to spot the target, hence landing on peoples houses. We had one damage our house and we lived in Shirley considered a fairly safe place to be, lived in a Romany caravan in Earlswood whilst our windows and slates replaced and chimney repaired. My sisters and I thought it a great adventure, still had to go to school though. Eric
 
very close old brit...ive read a lot of peoples memories about the bombs dropping and most of them said the most scary thing was not knowng just where they would land...it was a lottery really

lyn
It is interesting that as children we did not have the worry that our parents, or parent, as a lot of us had a Dad away 'at the war' had, and of course we did not really know what that meant, we saw and heard the bombing, we went to the shelters, we saw the damage, but we did not or were not aware of the grief and the worry that the older people felt or thought about. Mum always said thank goodness that was not us as she discussed the latest raid with a neighbour and the closest we got to a bomb was the UXB that fell in Oscott cemetery and the house that was bombed in Goosemoor Lane. It was only as I grew older 1942 onwards that I began to realise what everyone was talking about, I firstly thought that when the raids stopped it was all over, but Dad did not come home, because he was still out there. Parents of teenagers would begin to worry that their son would be called up and of course many of them were, I think the only time when I realised how serious it all was, was when a brother and sister did not come into school one morning and next day as we gathered in the school hall for assembly, the headmistress told us that they would not be in for the rest of the week because their father had been killed in the war and we had to pray for them. Of course as children we knew we would win the war.
Thank goodness we are all still here to be able remember it and talk about it.
Bob
 
One memory, was going to school on the bus from Yardley to Moseley School of art and seeing all the building bombed out the night and day before. One bomb hit the church, next to the school and we all said why could it have not hit the school instead!!!
 
So my pop to this day swears the Government lied about the death tolls, he was at the Austin's and America sent over engines in crates along with a set of tools, one time when unpacking a crate he came across a US news paper the head line THOUSANDS KILLED IN COVENTRY BOMBINGS he says the deaths we're under reported all over he said the newspapers used for packing told a different story and after a while they stopped use newspapers for packing
 
Of course facts and figures were either distorted or under-estimated here. The Government had a duty to keep up peoples morale. Compare aircraft losses on both sides which were quoted at the time. History has changed to to a more realistic figure. I am sure fairly accurate figures are now known, which contrasts to Eastern Europe where such vast numbers of deaths, from very many reasons, are only guesswork even now.
Nothing has changed even after this time. All politicians manipulate facts and figures for various reasons.
 
Radiorails, I am in complete agreement with you but as a Brit I would like to believe those in charge, this whole Nazi deal was one of the best propaganda exercise ever, I have read some numbers for Russian loses and it's incredible how Starlin sacrificed his own people the defense of Starlingrad what a waste of life, if some of the numbers are to be believed he sacrificed more people than Jews murdered by the Nazis
 
Whilst some folk have commented that V1s never reached as far as the Midlands, that is not quite true. There are the remains of one such missile at RAF Cosford, which landed just outside Newport, on the Staffs / Shropshire border. This was one of the air launched versions fired against Manchester in December 1944. Birmingham was fortunately spared.
 
From earlier in the thread and mentions Newport ... :)
Some information about V1 attacks outside the London area and the map shows that because they were air launched the impact sites were not accurate.

index.php

On Christmas Eve, 1944. 45 missiles air-launched from He-111s of KG53 approximately 40 miles off the east coast between Hornsea and Mablethorpe between 0500 and 0600 aiming at Manchester. A V1 flying bomb struck near the corner of Abbey Hills Road and Warren Lane and 27 people were killed and a further 49 people were injured.
See http://aircrashsites.co.uk/air-raid...e-v1-attack-on-manchester-christmas-eve-1944/

There is an account of the V1 which impacted near Newport in Shropshire.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2005/05/27/history_bomb_on_newport_feature.shtml
 
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