Oisin
gone but not forgotten
This is an old one which some of you may have read on Virtual Brum, so I apologise if I'm boring you with it again. It was a recent forum debate prompted that me to post it here as I think it very graphically illustrates the futility of war And YES, this one is autobiographical:
WARRIORS WITHOUT A CAUSE
Our street ran roughly south to north. It was an assortment of terraced, back-to-backs, and some slightly better houses. My family lived in, what we regarded as, one of the slightly better ones, 149 (on the left hand side, next to the allotment, and last before the 96 terminus which was situated under the L.M.S. railway bridge). We had four bedrooms (including the attic), a separate kitchen and our own outside lavatory.
The unusual thing about our street was it continued across the city border – part in Birmingham, part in Smethwick. Not only was it a town border, but as Birmingham was in Warwickshire and Smethwick in Staffordshire, it was also a county boundary. We (I lived on the Birmingham side) were citizens of a major modern city. They, the ones on the other side, were the inhabitants of a small, grimy, industrial town, on the borders of the Black Country, all but left behind in the Industrial Revolution. We worked in modern factories conducting precision engineering. They slaved in smoky old foundries making rough-arsed castings. With such cultural differences, it was unsurprising that the two communities could not live side-by-side in peace.
Perhaps there should have been one, but there was no official border crossing point. The only guide to the boundary was a lamppost positioned in the middle of the pavement, somewhere between the Railway Inn and The Royal Engineer. To the left of this landmark was Smethwick, to the right – Birmingham.
The street terminated at Black Patch Park, where it swung sharp left into Smethwick, where the name changed from Wellington Street to Foundry Lane. This left part of the park, where the swings and roundabouts were, in ‘our territory’ and the rest in ‘theirs’ - the Merry Hill Wallahs. (Merry Hill being that area of Smethwick – Wallahs probably coming from one of us, more educated Brummies, with a knowledge of the Raj.)
To intimate that we were continuously at war with our Merry Hill neighbours would be over-sensational. From what I can remember, I think the adults rubbed along pretty well together. My father had drinking companions from across the border. My mother had an office-cleaning job at Avery’s, which although advertising its address as Birmingham, was actually in Smethwick, where she worked with many a Merry Hill colleague. But, having been born on the other side of the border, I suppose her choice of companions wasn’t that much of a surprise.
No, it was us kids. We weren’t prejudiced or biased in any way (we’d never heard those words) we just hated one another. Strangely enough, ‘they’ shared our school and I can’t recall any animosity in the classrooms. I think they accepted being in the ‘C’ stream for everything. It was the school holidays when the warring used to take place. (Well, you’ve got to find something to fill in the long summer days, and knocking seven bells out of somebody is as good a pass-time as anything; it doesn’t cost much either.)
The battle lines would inevitably be drawn in Black Patch Park. A fenced off brook, carrying all sorts of unknown toxic effluent from factories, separated ‘our’ patch from Wallah country. We would infiltrate along the brook and invade from a bridge further down stream. ‘Ammo’ as we called it (sticks, stones, bricks etc.) could sometimes be hard to come by. That was until for some reason, which is still unknown to me, loads and loads of building rubble was dumped in the backfield, deep in the heart of Wallah ground. They were quick to exploit this by building bunkers and other defensive structures out of the large pieces of masonry, which included broken up gravestones, and keeping the smaller stuff for ammo. Well, this was a red rag to a bull. Those structures had to be destroyed whatever the cost. Looking back, I’m surprised the cost wasn’t greater than it actually was. In fact, such was the ferocity of the ensuing war it’s amazing that nobody was killed.
Being completely unprepared and unorganised (I blame our generals), our first onslaught was about as effective as the Charge of the Light Brigade. We were easily repulsed by a heavy bombardment of stones and half-duckers (broken house bricks) launched by the Wallahs heavy artillery. Injuries were sustained and prisoners were taken. The latter were later released in exchange for building material. The grossly exaggerated stories the released captives had to tell were terrifying. They included tales of numerous breaches of the Geneva Convention, such as being tied hand and foot, being tortured with lighted candles, and being forced to work as slaves to repair the few defences we had managed to breach.
As far as our forces were concerned, this was it - no more skirmishes. This was all-out war. From now on there would be no quarter given. We needed to take time to organise and gather sufficient resources. The cuts and scrapes sustained by some of our gallant soldiers told us we needed protection from the superior artillery of the Wallahs. A scouting party was sent out to collect dustbin lids from their own homes to use as shields. One of our ordnance experts discovered that with a bit of patience and brute force, the iron railings around the brook could be loosened and removed, making them ideal for use as spears and lances.
These new sophisticated; lethal armaments enabled us to equip commando-raiding parties who carried out successful sorties to capture materials and manpower for building our defences. The security offered by these new fortifications served in attracting more willing recruits. Although there was some initial opposition to them, my sisters enlisted for front-line action. Neither of them were bad scrappers but, besides this, their presence had the added advantage of attracting some of the bigger kids into our ranks - those, who for some strange reason enjoyed the company of girls. Unfortunately, they did also attract some characters we could have well done without, like the prat who worried about getting his white socks muddy in case his mother killed him.
That was one advantage our enemy had – there were no wusses like that in their ranks. Nor did they have any sissies who had to leave the battlefield at mid-day because their mommies would have their lunches on the table. (This was probably because there was nothing to eat in most of the houses in Merry Hill.) No, the Wallahs would bring their own provisions for the day, a stale jam sandwich and a bottle of water. And brother, couldn’t they fight on that? Just like the Japanese who could give the yanks hell on just a bowl of rice a day.
With both sides evenly matched, as with most wars, the upper hand swung between the two. Ground captured one day would be lost the next etc. Then came the rains, which left Black Patch Park resembling the Somme. I can remember both sides being bogged down in their bunkers, with no action taking place for a whole day. Then things began to turn. The elder of my two sisters began fraternising with a fusilier from the other side. He managed to convince her that going to a matinee at the Winson Green Picture Palace would be preferable to wanging half-duckers at a bunch of gorks in the Black Patch Park. As she had a place at a grammar school in the coming term, I thought she was fairly intelligent, but she fell for his crap, hook, line and sinker. Fortunately, the vast majority of the combatants were more committed to the cause (whatever it was), enabling the war to carry on almost to the end of the long summer’s break.
I can still recall the final and decisive battle when the Merry Hill Wallahs gave in to the humiliation of our superior forces and left the field with their tails between their legs. In a textbook manoeuvre, we managed to rout them from their rat holes and for once and for all, totally destroy all their amenities, leaving them absolutely defenceless. We celebrated their withdrawal by beating a tattoo on our dustbin lid shields with our railing lances.
I can remember my sister and I returning home, elated, battle weary and covered from head to foot in mud. Our mom would be leaving for her cleaning job at 5 o’clock so, fearful of her wrath when she saw the state of us, instead of going round to the back door, we sat on the front step to await her departure. We knew that in her rush to work she would not have the time to stop and clatter us.
No matter how careful you are an unknown quantity can always upset your plans. In our case it was Mrs ‘Nosey’ Glew. She saw us at the front of the house and immediately went round the back to inform on us. The rest was more predictable: Mother went mad. We got scragged off the step and clattered (well in time for her to get herself ready for work). Then we were banned from the ground that we had fought so hard to make ‘ours’.
For every day that was left of the summer break, to keep us clean and out of trouble, Mom insisted on dragging us around the bloody shops with her.
In retrospect, I suppose, I am fortunate to have lived to tell the tale.
THE END
WARRIORS WITHOUT A CAUSE
Our street ran roughly south to north. It was an assortment of terraced, back-to-backs, and some slightly better houses. My family lived in, what we regarded as, one of the slightly better ones, 149 (on the left hand side, next to the allotment, and last before the 96 terminus which was situated under the L.M.S. railway bridge). We had four bedrooms (including the attic), a separate kitchen and our own outside lavatory.
The unusual thing about our street was it continued across the city border – part in Birmingham, part in Smethwick. Not only was it a town border, but as Birmingham was in Warwickshire and Smethwick in Staffordshire, it was also a county boundary. We (I lived on the Birmingham side) were citizens of a major modern city. They, the ones on the other side, were the inhabitants of a small, grimy, industrial town, on the borders of the Black Country, all but left behind in the Industrial Revolution. We worked in modern factories conducting precision engineering. They slaved in smoky old foundries making rough-arsed castings. With such cultural differences, it was unsurprising that the two communities could not live side-by-side in peace.
Perhaps there should have been one, but there was no official border crossing point. The only guide to the boundary was a lamppost positioned in the middle of the pavement, somewhere between the Railway Inn and The Royal Engineer. To the left of this landmark was Smethwick, to the right – Birmingham.
The street terminated at Black Patch Park, where it swung sharp left into Smethwick, where the name changed from Wellington Street to Foundry Lane. This left part of the park, where the swings and roundabouts were, in ‘our territory’ and the rest in ‘theirs’ - the Merry Hill Wallahs. (Merry Hill being that area of Smethwick – Wallahs probably coming from one of us, more educated Brummies, with a knowledge of the Raj.)
To intimate that we were continuously at war with our Merry Hill neighbours would be over-sensational. From what I can remember, I think the adults rubbed along pretty well together. My father had drinking companions from across the border. My mother had an office-cleaning job at Avery’s, which although advertising its address as Birmingham, was actually in Smethwick, where she worked with many a Merry Hill colleague. But, having been born on the other side of the border, I suppose her choice of companions wasn’t that much of a surprise.
No, it was us kids. We weren’t prejudiced or biased in any way (we’d never heard those words) we just hated one another. Strangely enough, ‘they’ shared our school and I can’t recall any animosity in the classrooms. I think they accepted being in the ‘C’ stream for everything. It was the school holidays when the warring used to take place. (Well, you’ve got to find something to fill in the long summer days, and knocking seven bells out of somebody is as good a pass-time as anything; it doesn’t cost much either.)
The battle lines would inevitably be drawn in Black Patch Park. A fenced off brook, carrying all sorts of unknown toxic effluent from factories, separated ‘our’ patch from Wallah country. We would infiltrate along the brook and invade from a bridge further down stream. ‘Ammo’ as we called it (sticks, stones, bricks etc.) could sometimes be hard to come by. That was until for some reason, which is still unknown to me, loads and loads of building rubble was dumped in the backfield, deep in the heart of Wallah ground. They were quick to exploit this by building bunkers and other defensive structures out of the large pieces of masonry, which included broken up gravestones, and keeping the smaller stuff for ammo. Well, this was a red rag to a bull. Those structures had to be destroyed whatever the cost. Looking back, I’m surprised the cost wasn’t greater than it actually was. In fact, such was the ferocity of the ensuing war it’s amazing that nobody was killed.
Being completely unprepared and unorganised (I blame our generals), our first onslaught was about as effective as the Charge of the Light Brigade. We were easily repulsed by a heavy bombardment of stones and half-duckers (broken house bricks) launched by the Wallahs heavy artillery. Injuries were sustained and prisoners were taken. The latter were later released in exchange for building material. The grossly exaggerated stories the released captives had to tell were terrifying. They included tales of numerous breaches of the Geneva Convention, such as being tied hand and foot, being tortured with lighted candles, and being forced to work as slaves to repair the few defences we had managed to breach.
As far as our forces were concerned, this was it - no more skirmishes. This was all-out war. From now on there would be no quarter given. We needed to take time to organise and gather sufficient resources. The cuts and scrapes sustained by some of our gallant soldiers told us we needed protection from the superior artillery of the Wallahs. A scouting party was sent out to collect dustbin lids from their own homes to use as shields. One of our ordnance experts discovered that with a bit of patience and brute force, the iron railings around the brook could be loosened and removed, making them ideal for use as spears and lances.
These new sophisticated; lethal armaments enabled us to equip commando-raiding parties who carried out successful sorties to capture materials and manpower for building our defences. The security offered by these new fortifications served in attracting more willing recruits. Although there was some initial opposition to them, my sisters enlisted for front-line action. Neither of them were bad scrappers but, besides this, their presence had the added advantage of attracting some of the bigger kids into our ranks - those, who for some strange reason enjoyed the company of girls. Unfortunately, they did also attract some characters we could have well done without, like the prat who worried about getting his white socks muddy in case his mother killed him.
That was one advantage our enemy had – there were no wusses like that in their ranks. Nor did they have any sissies who had to leave the battlefield at mid-day because their mommies would have their lunches on the table. (This was probably because there was nothing to eat in most of the houses in Merry Hill.) No, the Wallahs would bring their own provisions for the day, a stale jam sandwich and a bottle of water. And brother, couldn’t they fight on that? Just like the Japanese who could give the yanks hell on just a bowl of rice a day.
With both sides evenly matched, as with most wars, the upper hand swung between the two. Ground captured one day would be lost the next etc. Then came the rains, which left Black Patch Park resembling the Somme. I can remember both sides being bogged down in their bunkers, with no action taking place for a whole day. Then things began to turn. The elder of my two sisters began fraternising with a fusilier from the other side. He managed to convince her that going to a matinee at the Winson Green Picture Palace would be preferable to wanging half-duckers at a bunch of gorks in the Black Patch Park. As she had a place at a grammar school in the coming term, I thought she was fairly intelligent, but she fell for his crap, hook, line and sinker. Fortunately, the vast majority of the combatants were more committed to the cause (whatever it was), enabling the war to carry on almost to the end of the long summer’s break.
I can still recall the final and decisive battle when the Merry Hill Wallahs gave in to the humiliation of our superior forces and left the field with their tails between their legs. In a textbook manoeuvre, we managed to rout them from their rat holes and for once and for all, totally destroy all their amenities, leaving them absolutely defenceless. We celebrated their withdrawal by beating a tattoo on our dustbin lid shields with our railing lances.
I can remember my sister and I returning home, elated, battle weary and covered from head to foot in mud. Our mom would be leaving for her cleaning job at 5 o’clock so, fearful of her wrath when she saw the state of us, instead of going round to the back door, we sat on the front step to await her departure. We knew that in her rush to work she would not have the time to stop and clatter us.
No matter how careful you are an unknown quantity can always upset your plans. In our case it was Mrs ‘Nosey’ Glew. She saw us at the front of the house and immediately went round the back to inform on us. The rest was more predictable: Mother went mad. We got scragged off the step and clattered (well in time for her to get herself ready for work). Then we were banned from the ground that we had fought so hard to make ‘ours’.
For every day that was left of the summer break, to keep us clean and out of trouble, Mom insisted on dragging us around the bloody shops with her.
In retrospect, I suppose, I am fortunate to have lived to tell the tale.
THE END
