Legend of Blitzkid

[Blitzkid]

Yes, most had a wife, children that helped them to settle again, and we had Old comrade meetings to help us help one another when there was trouble, but many were given useless gongs, little pension, and their old job returned, but there were thousands that could not do that job, wounded etc, and they had no one to turn to. I knew many in that situation, broken marriages, trained to kill for five years, but no training for a civilian life. Some found it hard to regain civil life again, as did I..you got in a argument, a fight and all your skills you now had came into force. In the middle east sports, Montgomery complained it was always the same specialised units that won all the prizes, etc., yes an awkward time all round, disbanded SAS, new weapons for old, problems, deaths, accidents, but you will find little in books wrote about it.

[rebbonk]

... you will find little books wrote about it.

That's why your memories are so important and warrant sharing.

[Blitzkid]

I once had a photo of Coventry workforce coming out of work, right across Broadgate the cyclist spread
hundreds of them, and the tramway tracks never bothered them one little bit, so it would be wrong tO say that Coventry trams caused Problems as Cov hisoric stated.

[Blitzkid]

The barrage Balloons during the war cause three times the trouble to allied planes than to enemy planes.
But then consider a basket slung under the belly of the balloon, a small opening and stepping from it at 800 feet, no slipstream, no nothing, just a crazy fall and hope for the best of your parachute.

[Blitzkid]

Dutchman, the wartime defences of Coventry started in 1937 when council and Army people forced families to make room for billeting soldiers who dug and built sites for anti-aircraft guns but they were badly planned. When the canal was breached the water ran down the brooks and reached the sandbags that surrounded the big gun, a few more gallons and the big gun would have been flooded. An artillery-gun had only 15 seconds to fire before the plane was out of danger.

There was foot and mouth during the war but as soldiers were on maneuvers it was basically ignored and it died it’s own death.

[rebbonk]

...the wartime defences of Coventry started in 1937 when council and Army people forced families to make room for billeting soldiers who dug and built sites for anti-aircraft guns---

Thank you Blitzkid. I wasn't aware that they were so well ahead of the curve!

[Blitzkid]

Yes, in 1936 we were watching newsreels at the cinema of German planes bombing Barcelona then they began in Poland, we were fully aware of war, and what Hitler were ranting about. Yes, my teenage sister had to move from her Boxroom in with us boys with just a curtain between and two soldiers were billeted in that boxroom and I was now learning about the army and practicing with real rifles. A couple of years later she was on a gun-site in South London and Coventry had almost as much sand as the Sahara desert.

But you know, people here were shocked at the drama of Peaky Binders but there were many like that in the late twenties, early thirties era. Not just in Brum, in Coventry as well. They fought the race gangs in London in the thirties. Oh yes I grew up in a violent world. The first air-raid and cattle was decimated in fields of Shilton, bits hung in trees, on barbed wire. I was 14, my young brother 12 and we crossed that field of bits of cows on our way to school (evacuation). It wasn’t hard to teach me dirty fighting with SOE instructors at the ripe old age of 17.

[Blitzkid]

Dutchman, hi, did you know that when the war started, not only were young men enlisted, but able-bodied men over military age had to either work in mining, agriculture, or war-related work? My dad First WW veteran, working on the canal, had to transfer to a factory on war-work. On V.E. Day he was released and went back to the canal job.

[dutchman]

I didn't know that, thanks!

I'd have thought transporting goods by canal was just as important to the war effort as working on the railways?

[Blitzkid]

My father worked as a lengthman, keeping the lengths in good repair,, looking for signs of weakness in canal Banks, keeping the water from silting, all manner of things that made sure of safe flow of working boats with goods, towpaths and hedgerows for safety of Horses.