|
Hi, Here's a bit of local history, my daughter wrote it for a school project, it may or not be of any use to you? A
FAMILY’S STORY ON THE AIR RAIDS 1941-1942
My Great Granddad Lived in Woodside near Baddesley Ensor he was 32 years old during the Second World War, He was a miner, and with six children life was not easy. One night during an air raid on Birmingham, German bombers dropped about six bombs in the area where they lived. Two exploded in the field at the bottom of the outcrop, and one by the top folly, a land mine fell which caused a large crater which today is now filled with water in the centre of the folly. One hit a house by gaytons bakery, which killed a mum and her baby also a evacuee who was living there to escape the bombing in the city’s. One of the bombs landed about were the playing fields of the Baddesley first school starts, which took off the tiles of the house’s down Woodside also off the old school which was their at the time. When the bombing started my Great Granddad put his six children and his wife in the pantry, because it was the strongest part of the house, he could not get in as well, there was no room left, he just paced up and down the hall. The blast from a nearby exploding bomb blowed out the windows and doors of their house, he said afterwards the front door came towards me, I turned, and the back door came towards me, all the ceilings in the house fell down, their was dust and rubble everywhere, the raid lasted 13 hours.
When light came the next day it started to rain heavy, so all the street had to get large tarpaulin sheets and spread them over the roofs. Next door to them lived a elderly couple and their son, he brought a piece of shrapnel around to them which had left a large crack down his house, and when they took one of the broken windows frames out there house, their was some shrapnel sticking out of it, they put them together and they matched, somebody said it was part of a large landmine.
The whole family had to stay at the wife’s father’s home in the next village for a week until theirs was fixed up to live in.
When the family returned home for several weeks after, my Great Granddad could not sleep after what had happened that night, and would sit on the door step listening for the sirens.
One night sitting their he saw a German bomber being followed by a fighter plane, the fighter plane was firing it’s guns at it, the bomber caught fire and he believes it came down somewhere at Meriden, with one person killed and four taken prisoner’s.
My Granddad himself was eight at the time and the next day was playing in the wood, when he kicked something up out of the ground, he put it under is arm, came up the garden path and took it to a man called Mr Sharrott, who was the air raid warden, he nearly had a fit! For it was an incendiary bomb which hadn’t gone off, nobody wanted to shout at him in case he dropped it, Mr Sharrott put it in a bucket of sand.
They all had to stay out of the woods from then on.
If the air raid’s sirens went off they used to hind in the concrete bunker on the top common, from there they could see the barrage balloons in the night sky over Birmingham, and the artillery guns firing at the planes. The women and children would take cover, while the men folk would walk about outside, one night my great Nan heard a loud whistling sound, all the men outside dropped to the ground, they believe that it was one of our own artillery shell’s , they must have fired at a low flying bomber, luckily it exploded somewhere at Grendon.
There was one frightening night when a bomber was flying overhead, a lorry skidded into a ditch by the White farm at Baxterley, its headlights were still switched on when it was bombed and its load of lard destroyed.
They remember a cottage down Carts lane on Boot Hill when a plane crashed into it, killing all the family apart from a little girl, who just happened to be standing by the fire place at the time, the fire place shielded her from the blast.
The war changed some people’s lives forever.
By EMMA CARTWRIGHT
|
