A Young Girls Memories Of Ww1

A Memory of Handsworth.

When my Mother passed away in 1999 I had the unhappy task of clearing out her Warden Controlled little flat. Amongst her possessions I came across an old history project I had done at school in the 1970s for which I recall I got very good marks. Mom must have been proud of it I think for she kept it along with various other momentos. Contained in my history project was a word for word account I had obtained from my Grandmother,Nel Holloway about the projects theme,world war one. Nanny Nel had been born in 1902 in Handsworth and was living there when hostilities began in the late summer of 1914.

"It had been a hot summer,we spent much of it outdoors,I went to my grandfathers farm over Kingswinford for a few weeks. I remember the grown ups all talking about 'The Kaiser' and 'The Serbs' and saying 'The French wont allow it'.It all meant nothing much to me at all. One night Mother sent me to get some coal from the shed and my Father was in the adjoining 'privvy'.I heard the chain flush and he came out with his paper,the headline just said 'Its War'.Dad took the coal bucket off me and I nodded at the paper. and said 'There is a war Dad?'. he smiled and said 'Im afraid so petal'.Our house was just down from the Albion football ground,next door was a tobacconists owned by Mr Harvey,my Fathers friend,the two of them would sit smoking and drinking port wine in our kitchen one night,Mr Harveys the next.I can see them now,laughing and joking,me sitting on the floor looking at one then the other of them.Once the war began they joked less and less and talked of little else but it made very little difference to my life at first. At school we had to take the little ones to the church hall as fast as we could in strict order in case we were 'attacked'. We had to practice this over and over again.It was a big game of course. Then,when I went with Dad down to Bromwich some Saturdays for some meat and groceries I started to notice more and more men in uniforms. Then one day some men came and boarded up the Albion ground,I remember watching them heaving big planks of timber through the gates. It was my 13th birthday, September 6th 1915 when the war really affected me first though. I suppose I recall it more keenly because it was my birthday. I had got a lovely little book of hymns and scriptures from Mother and Father and went down Middlemore to show it my friend Sarah Alcock,it was a Saturday I think because I wasn't at school or at church. When I got there the curtains were closed which I remember thinking was funny as it was well past breakfast time. Mrs Alcock came to the door and said Sarah would not be seeing anybody today. I was really puzzled but later,after I had lay on my bed reading my new book for quite a long time I heard a knock at our door and then Mrs Alcock talking to Mother,then sobbing and Father shouting 'Whatevers up Lizzy'. Sarahs father had always been a soldier,long as I could remember,he was sometimes away but not all that often before the war but since it began I had only seen him once coming out of Mr Harveys shop.It turned out he had been killed at Mons,they had had a letter.Sarah showed it to me sometime later.After that one heard of deaths all the time and saw men with horrible wounds more and more regularly. Abel Baker was killed,his sister Jane sat next to me in classes. Then the vicars son Reginald, Kenny Lowe,he delivered our coal,his little brother Tim took over the round when Kenny went into the army,Timmy was so small he could barely lift the coal bags but he did the round,one day he told Father Ken had died on the Somme.My Father cried,the only time I ever saw him cry until my Mother died in 1947. In 1916 I left school after classes on the day after my 14th birthday.It had been decided I could work for Mr Harvey next door,I had been going in on Saturdays for an hour to learn the stock and the weighing scales since Easter and Mr Harveys son Josh was away training now with the navy and couldnt help out so I was to work there,I was always good with sums which helped and so I began work at the tobacconists. I liked the job,the soldiers that came in sometimes and some of the men from the saw mill were very cheeky and made me blush terribly but I got used to it. I would also get the war news from the gossips of course. More and more deaths and quite often people I knew.Mind you the 'jungle drums' as Dad used to call them were not always right. Mrs Spearing ( 5 woodbine and a minted snuff on Saturdays) told me one morning that Jessica Dunnes brother Howard had been killed in Flanders then who was first customer after lunch that same day? Howard Dunne! Home on leave and the healthiest ghost I ever saw. Josh Harvey came home wounded in May 1918 and took over the duties behind the counter again so I went to work with my cousin Gracie at a munitions factory over Perry Beeches way.It was very small,a big shed really and only five of us worked there,I had to pack these tiny pins into crates of 288 per crate,it was tedious work but I was doing my bit however small and I got a shilling more than at Mr Harveys.It was there I met your grandad Dick. He was an MP,an army policeman on leave whose sister Flo worked with me.But thats another story.The war ended in the November and I got tiddly in the Royal Oak."

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