The Birmingham Blitz: Handsworth housewife tells her story

Sep 26 2010 By Richard McComb

She was the Handsworth housewife who saved countless lives serving as an ambulance driver during the Birmingham Blitz.

Yet the amazing story of the late Gwen Berry would have been forgotten but for the discovery of a letter she sent to a friend on New Year’s Eve, 1940....

THESE landmines seem the latest horror and in the last raid or two, Handsworth came in for a full share of them.

We had three not far from us one night, one which blew out all doors and windows on the main road for some distance. But the one nearer to us got caught by its parachute on a telegraph pole and was taken to bits by a Suicide Squad. Lucky for us.

This war has its Nuisance Side, its Pathetic Side, Gruesome Side and Humorous Side.

Oh, the darned nuisance of it, keeping suitcases filled with clothes ready to throw out in case of fire, filling the bath with water in case next day there is none, turning off gas and electricity – having seen some of our Rescue Squad boys landed in hospital by this not having been done.

And after a raid, the misery of being without water or gas or telephone for days on end. Then, after it all, the whole town ordered to boil every drop of drinking water and milk for fear of typhoid.

The pathetic side is accentuated by everyone being so wonderfully brave. One old man with terrible head injuries said to me: ‘Miss, don’t worry about me, I’ve been through two wars so a bit extra won’t matter.’

And quite a young girl who I picked up in Bristol Street with a broken arm and injured spine was worrying every minute about a little wicker basket and finally apologised for worrying us about it but said: ‘You see, it’s all I’ve got left in the world now.’

As for the gruesome side – no need to dwell on that.

There are plenty of humorous incidents about this job too, thank Heaven, to relieve the situation.

As for the instance when our very exclusive lady driver was sent out to an incident – a very Edgbaston type. She found herself in a slummy quarter of the town and was just thinking to herself: ‘How disgusting. It would be my fate to be sent to a filthy dirty district like this’ when a bomb came whistling down so close that she had to flop down on her face in the gutter, the same as everyone else.

A little later she was more disgusted than ever and thought, ‘This is a frightful place – I can smell fish!’ She asked the others who said: ‘Now you come to mention it, yes, we can smell fish.’

When it was safe to use a torch she looked down and there, clinging to the front of her coat, was a cod’s head gazing up at her reproachfully. He had evidently got to the gutter first!

Another night I was sent out was also a night of incendiaries and high explosives – fires seemed everywhere. Whichever street I turned down there was a fierce red glow at the bottom of it.

They seemed that night to concentrate on pubs.