Keep the Home Fires Burning (27 page)

‘Well,’ Marion said unsympathetically, ‘they are taking no chances, and rightly, I’d say.’

‘Yeah, but there weren’t no gas,’ Tony protested, ‘cos there weren’t no policeman on a bike rattling that thing they give them to warn us.’

‘How would you know?’ Richard commented. ‘You just said you couldn’t hear much down there.’

‘Anyway, none of this matters,’ Marion said. ‘I’m just glad that the teachers are taking this seriously and have everything organised so that you all had somewhere to take shelter, and underground as well, which is much better than anything on the surface, I’d have thought.’

In the middle of October, Churchill’s wife, Clementine, visited the neighbourhoods and factories that had been affected by enemy bombing, and there were pictures of her in the newspaper, talking to the homeless and dispossessed people. Some of the women had placed Union flags in the piles of rubble that had once been their homes, and one was reputed to have told Clementine Churchill, ‘Our house might be down, but our spirits are still up.’ The reporter went on the praise the courage of these feisty people, whom he said showed unflinching courage.

That night that courage was tested again as
enemy bombers attacked the city once more. The raid was reminiscent of those on 25 and 26 August in its intensity. Subsequently there was an article in the newspaper detailing the bravery of a Home Guard officer. He had been called to a bombed-out house near the city centre where there were people trapped in a gas-filled cellar, and without any hesitation he had gone in to rescue them. Though he’d pulled two people clear, on his third attempt he had collapsed and died from the effects of the gas, leaving behind a widow and seven-year-old son, and all the people still in the cellar had died as well.

Marion felt slightly sick as she folded the paper up. She remembered her mother’s words but she knew it would help no one if she were to share her fear with the others, so she kept the news article to herself.

The nightly raids were back in earnest, causing widespread damage and deaths across the city. When they emerged from the cellar, if they pulled back the blackout curtain the Whittakers would see the fires started by the incendiaries, with orange and yellow flames licking the midnight-blue sky.

Then one morning in October, while they were eating breakfast, Richard spoke about the previous night’s raid.

‘God, the flames were roaring,’ he said. ‘The firemen’s hoses didn’t seem to touch them and the air was full of cordite and steam and smoke and
stank of heat – scorching, you know – and one whole corner of New Street has been wiped out. All that’s left is this gigantic mound of rubble and mangled iron girders. There’re these dirty great craters in the middle of the road and tramlines all over the place, and the road and pavements are full of splintered glass. And a bomb hit the Carlton Cinema and there were nineteen people killed in there and they didn’t have a mark on them.’

‘Nineteen people dead and not a mark on them?’ Marion repeated incredulously. ‘You’re having us on.’

‘No,’ Richard said, ‘honest, but it is hard to believe it. I dain’t at first. And I wouldn’t normally have heard owt about it.’

‘So how come you did?’

‘Well, we pulled this bloke out of some rubble. He’d cut his arm real bad and the doctor asked me to go with him in the ambulance so that I could hold his arm up and that. Selly Oak was the only hospital that had any space, and one of the ARP blokes that pulled the people out the picture house was in there. He was having treatment for burns and that, but he was really shook up. He said there were nineteen people sat in their seats as if they were waiting for the main film, like, and their lungs had been burned away by a bomb blast as they sat there.’

‘Crikey!’ Violet cried. ‘What a way to die.’

‘They probably felt nothing,’ Marion said soothingly.

‘Some of them did,’ Richard said. ‘That’s what really upset this chap. They was all taken to Selly Oak and he was waiting beside a young lad lying on a stretcher, and the hospital managed to located his father and when his father came in he heard the boy speak to him and then he closed his eyes and just pegged it.’ ‘Oh God!’

‘That’s enough!’ Marion said firmly because she had seen the shock and repugnance on the children’s faces. They had just gone through a terrible raid and then woken for school after only a few hours’ sleep and this she thought was too much for them to have to cope with. So she spoke briskly. ‘All war’s awful. I think that we’re all agreed on that, but now isn’t the time to discuss it any more or you will all be late.’

The others saw the look in Marion’s eyes and knew what she was saying and why, and Richard felt a bit ashamed that he had told them about the people in the cinema when the children were there, particularly his younger bloodthirsty brother. He vowed that he would wait until they were out of the earshot before he recounted anything like that again.

For the next three weeks Birmingham was battered, causing death and injury to many Brummies and destruction and chaos to all as factories and houses crumpled in the wake of so many bombs.

At Mass on Sunday 10 November prayers were
said for the repose of the soul of Neville Chamberlain, who had died the previous day.

In the Whittaker household opinion was divided about the role he had played in leading the country into war.

‘D’you think he really did believe in appeasement?’ Violet asked.

‘Maybe he did,’ Richard conceded, ‘but what was the alternative if he hadn’t tried, at least?’

‘I think whatever that man did would have been wrong. He was between a rock and a hard place,’ Peggy put in. ‘Hitler wanted power and world dominance at any price, and if that included war, then he was ready for it.’

‘And we weren’t,’ Richard said. ‘And Chamberlain at least did give us almost a year to prepare ourselves.’ He glanced at his mother and said, ‘I suppose the funeral is in London?’

‘Yes,’ Marion said, ‘despite the fact that he was MP for Edgbaston for years, but there’s to be a memorial service at St Martin’s down the Bull Ring on the fifteenth.’

‘Will you go?’ Peggy asked.

Marion shook her head. ‘I can’t even if I wanted to,’ she said. ‘Catholics aren’t allowed to attend, or take part in a service in any other Church.’

‘Why?’

‘To tell you the truth, Peggy, I haven’t a clue,’ Marion said. ‘I asked the priest once and his answer was that a Catholic shouldn’t question the Mother Church.’

So no one in the Whittaker household went to the memorial service, but that morning they listened to the news as they ate their breakfasts and heard of the massive air raid on Coventry the previous night.

The newscaster’s voice shook as he announced that the city had been annihilated. Using the benefit of a clear night and a full moon Coventry had been pounded ceaselessly. Firemen were drafted in from all over to help fight the fires, and yet within a square mile eighty per cent of buildings were destroyed and 568 people were killed. Coventry had experienced raids before, but never on that scale. From that night, the voice on the wireless told them, a new word had entered the German language:
Coventrieren,
or Coventration, which meant the razing of a place to the ground.

When the news report was over, the adults looked at each other in sudden fear. They knew that what had been done in Coventry could be done just as easily in Birmingham.

The following Tuesday, at just after a quarter past seven, the sirens sent up their unearthly wail and everyone sprung into action. While the kettle boiled, drinks for the children and the makings for sandwiches were thrown into the shelter bag along with a packet of biscuits Marion had put on one side for emergencies. Peggy and Violet went down to light the paraffin stove, Sarah helped the twins get ready and Richard and Tony carried
down the blankets from their bed. Marion could hear the first sticks of incendiaries falling before the kettle was completely boiled and she made tea and filled hot-water bottles with hands that trembled.

When all was done, she went down to the cellar as Richard slipped out of the door. ‘No bombs yet,’ Violet said.

‘Plenty of incendiaries, though,’ Marion said. ‘I didn’t need to see them, I heard them well enough.’

‘Yeah, and they will light the way for the bloody bombers like daylight,’ Peggy said. ‘Little point in the blackout then.’

The words were hardly out of Peggy’s mouth when the faint whistle of the first bomb was heard, then another, and then a succession of them clumped so close together it was hard to distinguish between them and even in the cellar the drone of planes was so loud that it seemed all around them as if they were under attack from all sides.

As the hours dragged by, Marion’s fear increased and the tension in the cellar rose. She had been frightened before, but after reading about the gas-filled cellar the previous month, and what had been done to Coventry just a few nights before, her stomach was in knots and she felt as if she had ice running through her veins. She saw the twins were as terrified as she was, almost frozen with terror, and Tony’s eyes looked large and frightened in his white face.

Marion sat on the saggy old settee, held the
twins tight and tried to keep the lid on her own panic as she saw Tony, kneeling on the mattress with Sarah, leaning against her while her arms went round him. Peggy, at the other end of the settee, had her arms around Violet, who had begun to weep quietly. Marion knew with a sort of dread certainty that this was Birmingham’s own Coventration.

A sudden explosion, very close, rocked the walls of the cellar and the twins both emitted primeval shrieks of terror and burrowed closer into their mother, who held their shuddering bodies even closer as they sobbed. Sarah was more frightened than she ever remembered being in her life. She saw that though Tony was trying to be brave and manly, his eyes were standing out in terror and he was shaking from head to foot. She tightened her arms around him as a bomb came hurtling down so close they bent their heads against the onslaught.

But the explosion didn’t happen, and they looked up surprised that they were all still alive, while the raid continued as fiercely as ever.

The cellar door was suddenly wrenched open and Richard was standing on the threshold. ‘Thank God you’re all right,’ he said.

‘Richard, what are you doing here?’ Marion gasped.

‘I’ve come to tell you that you have to get out,’ Richard said. ‘And quickly too.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘There’s an unexploded bomb in the road. ‘It’s a big one so the whole area is being evacuated.’

‘But where are we to go?’

‘Atkinson’s Brewery have opened their cellar,’ Richard said. ‘Come on! Take only what you can carry and let’s get out of here.’

Marion was the last one out of the cellar and was strangely reluctant to leave.

‘Come on, Mom! What are you waiting for?’ Richard’s voice came from the top of the cellar steps.

‘Nothing,’ Marion said. Tm coming.’

How could she expect Richard to understand how much she resented being forced from her home? She gazed all around her before following the others into the street and her heart was heavy because she felt as if she had just said goodbye to the house she loved.

None of them ever forgot that night. Immediately they stepped into the street they were aware of the arc lights raking the sky, pinpointing the droning German planes that the barking ack-ack guns were trying to bring down. The screams of the descending bombs and the crashing of explosions were much louder and more frightening outside, and the air stunk from the brick dust, mixed with cordite and gas. Smoke from the many fires and the smouldering incendiaries swirled about them and caught in the backs of their throats.

They all saw the bomb in a massive crater only yards from their home and though no one said
anything they all knew they would have been killed if the bomb had gone off. ARP wardens and members of the Home Guard were urging all the residents of Albert Road to hurry. Mothers tried to catch hold of small children and soothe restless crying babies, and all around, disoriented people were scurrying along, carrying what they could.

As they neared the brewery they could see fires burning all over the city. Magda looked up to see even more German planes thronging the sky, flying in formation like gigantic menacing black beetles. So intrigued was she, she had unwittingly come to a stop on the pavement, flabbergasted when she actually saw the bomb doors open and the bombs tumble out and head downward with piercing whistles.

‘For God’s sake, child, what are you doing?’ Marion cried, giving Magda’s arm a yank just as the bombs found their mark with horrifying blasts and booms. These were followed by the unmistakable sound of falling masonry. Suddenly Magda wanted to be anywhere underground where this death and destruction could be muffled a little.

Inside the cellar the noise at first was horrendous. Many babies and toddlers continued to keen and grizzle, and they weren’t the only ones. Children and adults were doing the same, while others were praying. There were shouts from some and even laughter, and the Whittakers were pushed further forward as more and more came into that brewery cellar that night.

When Marion spotted Polly with her daughters and Jack she was so pleased. The two sisters hugged one another, Sarah and the twins hugged their cousins, while Jack, with a wide smile on his face, punched Tony on the arm and said, ‘What ho, Tone,’ and Tony grinned back at him.

‘Right bugger this, ain’t it?’ Polly said. ‘They took us all out the shelter in the park, said it weren’t safe with that big bomb.’

‘Where’s Pat?’

‘Out helping,’ Polly said. ‘Him and Colm, and I’m that worried about them.’

‘I feel the same about Richard,’ Marion said. ‘Part of me wants him to come into the cellar and be relatively safe, like the rest of us, and part of me is proud that he won’t even consider that. And maybe I should look out for Mammy and Daddy and see if they have been brought here too.’

‘No need,’ Polly said. ‘Orla and Siobhan spotted them. I thought they might be shook up and that, you know, so I went over.’