The Blitz - 14th November 1940

A little info here...BBC People's war

Ah the Blitz. I was born in 1939 - May to be exact. Yes I know I am getting on a bit, but who cares. So there I was under the stairs with my mum. Dad was working nights as he was to stay at work for some reason. As the war progressed mum and I went down the cellar due to the fact that she worked some evenings. Of course I didn't remember a thing down there but towards the end of the war I remember playing outside our house in Lime Tree Ave. in Tile Hill. I was allowed to go to Taskers (shop) over the road for odds and ends for mum, who would insist I said potatoes not 'taters'. Margaret and Billy Rice's dad ran a milk round from over the road. We had a black cat called Titus and I won't tell you what dad called it trying to get him in. I remember the street party held to celebrate the end of the war. The rest is history so I won't bore you all about it.

You won't bore us Dreamtime, do tell, it's fascinating to read recollections

Wearethemods, I have everything in good working order. It's just the memory box that needs a shake now and again. Don't mention The Ashes, my husband is up above and watching but not impressed at the moment.

In recent years our view of the Home Guard has been poorly influenced by the TV series 'Dad's Army'. There may have been Home Guard units with bumbling bank managers, old warriors, and the like, but the Home Guard units based at the big factories were a lot different. Post 511 shows how efficient these young engineers were in spotting the approaching enemy aircraft, sounding the alarm, and shooting at it. I was brought up in Leamington Spa in the 1950's and every schoolboy there knew of the daylight air raid on the Lockheed factory by a single German fighter/bomber. The factory Home Guard there had rigged their four Lewis machine guns so that they all fired together. They had done this using their engineering knowledge and expertise to make and adapt fittings they had to hand. As the German aircraft made a bombing run on the factory it met a sustained cone of fire from the four machine guns manned by the Home Guard. The aircraft was shot down and crashed nearby. The pilot was killed and I am almost sure that as a young child in the 1950's I saw his grave at the back of a local graveyard, it was marked with a black cross fashioned from angle iron. Some time later all of the German military graves in this country were re-buried in the German War Cemetery on Cannock Chase.

There are a number of German Luftwaffe Graves in Dyce, Aberdeen old Churchyard from Aircraft shot down in the City and Shire. They are situated alongside around Fifty Allied Graves of Servicemen killed from not just the UK but other Commonwealth Countries including Malta, Canada & NZ. There are other German Graves at various small Cemeteries along the NE Coast from Kreigmarine Sailors washed ashore following sinkings from both WW1 & 2. To digress a little, the Helmsman from RMS Titanic is buried in Aberdeen's main Cemetery ! Seemingly the man who tried to steer the Titanic in an effort to avoid colliding with the Iceberg head on died on a Ship in 1940 which was moored off Aberdeen.

Earlier this year I was in a party being guided around Stratford on Avon cemetery by a CWGC guide. I'm pretty sure that there are german graves there ??

Just looked on the website of the German Military Cemetery at Cannock Chase. It seems that the agreement between the UK government and the then West German government was ' for the transfer to a central cemetery in the United Kingdom of all graves which were not situated in cemeteries and plots of Commonwealth war graves maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in situ.' I think this means that graves in cemeteries maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission would remain where they were, but graves in other locations would be removed to the central cemetery at Cannock Chase. It was a case of who pays for the graves to be maintained.