here a few facts about ww2...
between june 25th 1940 and may 15th 1944
2,061 air raid message of all kinds were recieved in birmingham..of these 365 were red warnings..seventy seven of these alerts were followed by raids and because some of them ran into each other there were actually 65 seperate attacks on the city...
in total the luftfwaffe dropped on birmingham 5,129 high explosive bombs including 930 which did not go off..
48 parachute mines...of which 16 did not explode..
scores of thousands of incendiaries and a number of oil and phosophorus bombs...
in all around 2,000 tons of bombs pounded birmingham and 4,863 fires were reported....
these raids destroyed 12,391 houses.. and damaged tens of thousands more..they wrecked 302 factories and hundreds of others were damaged..they obliterated 34 churches..halls and cinemas and ravaged hundeds more...and they blew up 205 other buildings...
but the greatest loss of all was that of life..
german bombers killed..
2,241 brummies..
including 211 children under 16..
they seriously injured 3,010 people and slightly wounded another 3,682 folk..
how on earth they coped with all that i will never know...