Extracts from English Hartwright Reminiscences about life during
World War II 1939 -1945.

 

Wartime as seen through the eyes of a young boy from Malvern, Worcs

From John Austin Hartwright’s  Reminiscences

 

 

When the Second World War broke out my sister Hazel and I had to go with our mother to the Cowleigh Road School [Malvern, Worcs] playground bike shelter to collect our gas masks.  I had started at Somers Park School, Malvern, when I was three years old and remained there throughout my education.  If there was an air-raid warning those children who could get home in two minutes were allowed to do so and the rest were billeted on a home nearby, where we should go until the “all clear” was sounded.

 

When Dad was called up into the Catering Corps, my sister and I went to live with our Uncle Austin and Aunt Bessie as our mother had died in 1939.

 

I have vivid memories of travelling in the guards van of the train or on the double-decker bus to Birmingham to visit my maternal grandmother.  I can clearly remember the air-raids, when we were called down from the top floor of the four-storey house to go into the Anderson shelter.  This had been built by Council workmen by making a rectangular hole about 10 feet long by about 6 feet wide covered in corrugated iron and topped with a mound of earth.  As soon as we were inside the piece of sacking was pulled down and the candles lit.  There was not much space inside for six with just a wooden bench on each side.  I can recall the noise of the guns and bombs and the sensation of fear generated by the adults.  One day we got up to find that in the street opposite a row of houses had been bombed and there was just a pile of rubble.  We saw a similar scene in the vicinity of New Street Bus Station in Birmingham.

 

Meanwhile, from Uncle John’s house in Cowleigh Road, Malvern, it was possible to see Coventry in Warwickshire burning and hear the noise of the bombs.

 

 

 

 Air Raid Damage in

Somers Road 1940

 

Copyright Malvern Hills District Council

Published with their kind permission and that

of the Worcestershire Record Office where it is kept as

part of The Worcestershire Photographic Survey

Ref 889.156 BA 1332 Reg No 65,102 

 

Five bombs were dropped on Malvern.  One in the garden of what was the Newtown Road Police Station.  One fell on the Link Common, one near the Link railway station, one in Somers Road and the other in Lower Quest Hills Road.  During the air raids on Malvern we sheltered in the cellar of our house.

 

I can remember at Sunday School that we were taught a chorus about not being afraid of the bombs, although probably as we were so young that it was really the adults who needed reassuring!