I found myself being driven down Middleton Hall Road in Kings Norton the other day. It sparked off memories for me of the war years. I probably haven't been there for 70 years or more. It has changed a bit since then....
One of my father's oldest friends was a gentleman named Bert Ward (A. F. Ward) who lived with his family in that road. How my father and he came to be friends, I have no idea – at school together in the first 15 years of the 20th century? One-time neighbours? A chance meeting on holiday? I just don't know. But friends they were and they continued to be, with regular contact in the 1920s and 1930s, throughout the war years and up until the end of their lives. From 1940 to 1944 they were equally enthusiastic members of the Home Guard, my father with the 32nd Staffordshire; and Bert as a Major with the 27th Warwickshire (whose area of responsibility included Kings Norton and various factories in the area including Cadburys and Kalamazoo at Northfield).
Here he is, in Home Guard uniform.
When Bert Ward and his family, who included a son, Martin, lived in Middleton Hall Road, we visited them from time to time, travelling from the other side of Birmingham, often by tram which would run at an exciting speed down the middle of one of the modern dual carriageways. (I loved those journeys - especially if I was allowed on the top deck. But I never achieved my ambition of sitting on one of the open balconies which some of the trams still had).
Bert was a good man and always kind to me. We were in his lounge one Sunday morning. I think he had just come off parade but, whether or not that was the case, his Home Guard rifle was very available and within my reach. Unprompted and definitely uninvited, I picked it up, lay down on the lounge carpet and adopted the correct pose for holding and aiming the weapon which my father had taught me – legs well apart, elbows placed evenly on the floor to provide a firm, steady base as I peered down its length and lined up the sights on a distant china ornament. I suppose I was around seven at the time. Bert complimented me in generous terms on my expertise and, I have to say, I was quite proud of it myself! As I say, he was a kind man.
Possibly on the same occasion – or it might have been another – he demonstrated to my father and me various booby-trap detonators he had in his possession. One was rather like a large bulldog clip which, when the ears were compressed, could be slipped under a door so that, when the latter was moved...... Another was designed to be moored at one end by wire to something static such as a wall, and then, at the other, attached to a door or a piece of equipment or furniture. As soon as the movable object was shifted the two halves of the detonators would be pulled apart and again, disaster for the victim.
Bert, like so many of his generation, was a veteran of the Great War. I don't know where he served, with whom or what rank he held. But I do know that at some stage he had been gassed and he survived for the rest of his life (which was regrettably shortened) with bubbly lungs which had been seriously damaged by his experience.
I am happy that I knew Bert and that his life overlapped mine, if only for a relatively short period. I have records of family holidays, one of the earlier ones of which was in around 1934 and probably in Devonshire. Bert is standing at the entrance to a large bell tent behind members of his own family and of mine, and one or two children of fellow campers.
This happy day was before I appeared on that or any other scene. In those days Bert had a reputation for always running very ancient cars. He would say that when he could start seeing traffic through his rear view mirror, he knew that he had run out of oil.
The joint holidays continued and the families even found the opportunity of meeting up at a farm in Tintern for a few days on a couple of occasions in 1942 and 1943. The opportunity of fresh air, a brief forgetting of the adults' worries, unrationed farm food and even some illicit fly-fishing! I was well and truly around by then and enjoyed every moment of life in a totally peaceful Wye Valley - and even the day long railway journey back to New Street which of course included the excitement of being banked up the Lickey Incline.
I was present at perhaps the last holiday the families had together, in 1946 in South Devonshire. So, from 75 years ago, almost to the day, here's raising a glass of shandy to everyone, from Bert, his son Martin, his wife, Mary, my mother and, kneeling without a drink, yours truly!
Bert Ward worked as a surveyor for roads for the Birmingham Corporation. He died in 1957, possibly in his sixties. I am glad to remember and be able to honour him, for his life, his many kindnesses to me and his Home Guard service, all of which I witnessed so many years ago.
One of my father's oldest friends was a gentleman named Bert Ward (A. F. Ward) who lived with his family in that road. How my father and he came to be friends, I have no idea – at school together in the first 15 years of the 20th century? One-time neighbours? A chance meeting on holiday? I just don't know. But friends they were and they continued to be, with regular contact in the 1920s and 1930s, throughout the war years and up until the end of their lives. From 1940 to 1944 they were equally enthusiastic members of the Home Guard, my father with the 32nd Staffordshire; and Bert as a Major with the 27th Warwickshire (whose area of responsibility included Kings Norton and various factories in the area including Cadburys and Kalamazoo at Northfield).
Here he is, in Home Guard uniform.
When Bert Ward and his family, who included a son, Martin, lived in Middleton Hall Road, we visited them from time to time, travelling from the other side of Birmingham, often by tram which would run at an exciting speed down the middle of one of the modern dual carriageways. (I loved those journeys - especially if I was allowed on the top deck. But I never achieved my ambition of sitting on one of the open balconies which some of the trams still had).
Bert was a good man and always kind to me. We were in his lounge one Sunday morning. I think he had just come off parade but, whether or not that was the case, his Home Guard rifle was very available and within my reach. Unprompted and definitely uninvited, I picked it up, lay down on the lounge carpet and adopted the correct pose for holding and aiming the weapon which my father had taught me – legs well apart, elbows placed evenly on the floor to provide a firm, steady base as I peered down its length and lined up the sights on a distant china ornament. I suppose I was around seven at the time. Bert complimented me in generous terms on my expertise and, I have to say, I was quite proud of it myself! As I say, he was a kind man.
Possibly on the same occasion – or it might have been another – he demonstrated to my father and me various booby-trap detonators he had in his possession. One was rather like a large bulldog clip which, when the ears were compressed, could be slipped under a door so that, when the latter was moved...... Another was designed to be moored at one end by wire to something static such as a wall, and then, at the other, attached to a door or a piece of equipment or furniture. As soon as the movable object was shifted the two halves of the detonators would be pulled apart and again, disaster for the victim.
Bert, like so many of his generation, was a veteran of the Great War. I don't know where he served, with whom or what rank he held. But I do know that at some stage he had been gassed and he survived for the rest of his life (which was regrettably shortened) with bubbly lungs which had been seriously damaged by his experience.
I am happy that I knew Bert and that his life overlapped mine, if only for a relatively short period. I have records of family holidays, one of the earlier ones of which was in around 1934 and probably in Devonshire. Bert is standing at the entrance to a large bell tent behind members of his own family and of mine, and one or two children of fellow campers.
This happy day was before I appeared on that or any other scene. In those days Bert had a reputation for always running very ancient cars. He would say that when he could start seeing traffic through his rear view mirror, he knew that he had run out of oil.
The joint holidays continued and the families even found the opportunity of meeting up at a farm in Tintern for a few days on a couple of occasions in 1942 and 1943. The opportunity of fresh air, a brief forgetting of the adults' worries, unrationed farm food and even some illicit fly-fishing! I was well and truly around by then and enjoyed every moment of life in a totally peaceful Wye Valley - and even the day long railway journey back to New Street which of course included the excitement of being banked up the Lickey Incline.
I was present at perhaps the last holiday the families had together, in 1946 in South Devonshire. So, from 75 years ago, almost to the day, here's raising a glass of shandy to everyone, from Bert, his son Martin, his wife, Mary, my mother and, kneeling without a drink, yours truly!
Bert Ward worked as a surveyor for roads for the Birmingham Corporation. He died in 1957, possibly in his sixties. I am glad to remember and be able to honour him, for his life, his many kindnesses to me and his Home Guard service, all of which I witnessed so many years ago.
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