Interview with Beryl Fitter

Interview with Beryl Fitter

Beryl Fitter grew up in Birmingham during the war. She recalls the many hours spent in the Anderson or Morrison shelter. She also experienced the Black Market which supplemented the rations. The house across from them was bombed. An incendiary landed in their garden.

2025-05-07

00:13:37 Audio Recording

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AFitterB250507

RW: My name is Ruth Allan Williams and I’m here in the home of Beryl Fitter who lives in Maen-y-groes a little village near New Quay in West Wales. Beryl is going to tell us about her life as a child during the war. So Beryl, do you want to tell me about your early years.
BF: I was born in May 1935 so therefore when broke out I was four years old and I was ten years old when the war ended so my memories are quite with it still. The bombing in Birmingham where I lived in Erdington, Birmingham was not good. They used to come over looking for the Dunlop factory because of course they made tyres didn’t they, and Fisher and Ludlows and another factory called Constrictors I think. They made ammunitions.
RW: So your home was near the factories was it, Beryl?
BF: Well, not near land wise but air wise yes it would be.
RW: So what about your parents?
BF: What about them?
RW: So your mum and your dad were they both at home?
BF: Yes. Yes. They both were at home and I’ve got a younger brother. He was born in 1938. December 1938.
RW: So why were you not evacuated?
BF: Because my mother wouldn’t let me go and live with strangers.
RW: Right.
BF: Neither of us were evacuated. No.
RW: So where you lived was that a dangerous place?
BF: Well, the house at the bottom of our garden was bombed as I’ve told you. You know a whistling bomb came down and we could hear it whistling. We were in the shelter in the garden.
RW: So was that an Anderson shelter?
BF: Yes. And my father said to my mother, ‘This one is for us, mother.’ But it wasn’t. It was the house just across the garden. When we got up the next morning from the shelter the garden was just a big gap. A hole.
RW: Goodness me.
BF: So we were lucky. We did have an incendiary device drop in our garden in my father's onion patch and as children you think things are quite funny but my father said, ‘It looks as though we’re going to have fried onions.’
RW: So what did your dad do when this bomb, this incendiary bomb fell?
BF: He rushed out and he got his spade and he was shovelling soil on to it and patting it down and patting it down and it suddenly went pfft like that.
RW: Goodness.
BF: It was horrible.
RW: And with the Anderson shelter I mean how many times did you have to go in there?
BF: Oh, often. Often.
RW: So there would be a siren was there in the night?
BF: Oh yes. Sirens used to go warning us and of course we’d be in bed so mum and dad would wake us up, ‘Come on.’ All the way down the path into the shelter. Shut the door. I think we had a candle in a holder or did we have a tealight? We might have had a tealight. I can’t remember that. But we were there until the all-clear went. Sometimes we were there all night.
RW: Dear. And that must have been hard if it was cold.
BF: Oh it was but mum always took a bag down to the shelter with us. She’d always got say a biscuit or if she had time a flask of boiling water or something you know and we got spare blankets. We were always wrapped up well you know. But oh they were, they always had a strange damp smell the shelters. But if it was a quick warning my father used to get me and my brother and put us in the Morrison shelter under the table in the dining room part of the house and shut us in.
RW: Gosh. And so where, where would your parents go if —
BF: I don’t know. I think they must have gone and stood outside or whatever. I don’t know.
RW: So do you know of anybody who got injured or hurt or even killed during these bombing raids?
BF: Yes. We had a neighbour, Mr Dorney who had shrapnel go into his arm and he must have been in agony because they couldn’t find anything to put him on so they put him on a ladder and carried him up the Grove to the ambulance.
RW: Ok.
BF: His arm hanging out sort of thing you know.
RW: So —
BF: We had a neighbour killed in Burma during the war. They lived next door but one to us. Mr Wells. A nice man.
RW: Oh dear. That must have been awful.
BF: It was. It was a terrible thing.
RW: And what about the people in the house that you said was hit by a bomb close to you. Were they injured.
BF: The [unclear] No, they were all in the shelter fortunately.
RW: Right. So the Anderson shelter saved their lives then.
BF: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.
RW: Yeah. Gosh.
BF: Yeah. And they had several children if I remember rightly. Yeah.
RW: And so what, what was it like to be a child during the war then? Can you remember you know what day to day was like?
BF: Not very nice.
RW: You went, you went to school didn’t you?
BF: I went to school. Yes. I went to Birches Green Infants and Juniors.
RW: And you were telling me that you had to carry your gas mask.
BF: Oh. If you went without your gas mask you had a row.
RW: Oh dear.
BF: Yes. They’d stop you on your way into school. ‘Where’s your mask?’ We couldn’t afford to leave that behind. No. And we used to have practices with those. They were horrible things. Yeah. And then —
RW: And was —
BF: And then during the bombing as well because we weren’t all that far air wise from these three factories Dunlops, Fisher and Ludlows, and Constrictors because of the Luftwaffe coming for us, looking for us, looking for the factories they had these big oil drums up the main roads and they lit them so they had all thick black smoke.
[recording interrupted]
BF: I think you know —
RW: Dear.
BF: That was horrible because if you went outside, if you went say I had to run to the shop or something you know you’d come back with black eyes, black nose and black ears from the smoke.
RW: Goodness me. Yeah. Horrible. And what about food then? You know, rationing and —
BF: Oh ration.
RW: How did that affect you?
BF: Well, we got by.
RW: You were telling me, you were telling me about your father who was ill and he was had to be in a home, a convalescent home.
BF: A convalescent home because he’d had a big operation. Yeah.
RW: Yes. And you managed to sneak some things to him.
BF: Black Market sugar and tea.
RW: So tell us about that. How did that happen?
BF: I don’t know how mum got it or where she got it from but because my father always loved his cup of tea we used to go on the bus to the convalescent home in Erdington and there was a board loose that dad knew about and he pointed it out to mum. And we used to go on the bus, get off at the convalescent, by the convalescent home, walk across some grass to this loose board and my mum would say, ‘Are you there?’ You know. He’d say, ‘Is that you mother?’ And then push this board across and mum would hand over tea and sugar to him out of her bag.
RW: And then I guess he could share it with people in the home.
BF: Well, the matron loved him because he used to like to do the tea round.
RW: I bet she did.
BF: Consequently, when I said I wanted to be a nurse he said, ‘No way is a daughter of mine going to have to work as hard as they do.’
RW: That’s interesting.
BF: That was why. Because those were the days when there were matrons and what have you, you know. It —
RW: Yeah.
BF: The biggest regret of my life but there we are. It’s gone now.
RW: So, it’s the eightieth anniversary of VE Day tomorrow Beryl.
BF: I know it is.
RW: Eighty years.
BF: Yeah.
RW: So what happened to you on VE Day? Can you remember?
BF: We had a street party. They put trestle tables out with white sheets.
[recording interrupted]
BF: And we had jelly and all sorts of things that we hadn’t had for a long long time. I don’t know where that all came from you know but we had a good old feast and buntings and —
RW: Yeah.
BF: And as I say Mrs Wells put the flag out with the black bow on it because she’d lost her husband. Very sad.
RW: Yeah.
BF: I thought that was awful. A nice man.
RW: Yeah. So your memories in general of the war were they good memories or bad ones? What would you say?
BF: I would say we got through it by the skin of our teeth. I mean, as children we were still able to play outside but you couldn’t stray very far in case the siren went. In fact, I remember on one occasion there was two little boys who lived near us. One of them was the Wells boy and they wanted to go to the park, Rookery Park it was called, on the swings so I said, ‘Oh, come on. I’ll take you.’ So we went up to Rookery Park. We’d just got there on the swings and the siren went. I said, ‘Oh come on. We’d better get home.’ Well, we’d got to walk down the Bromford Lane and Bromford Crescent and as we were walking down we walked all right by the hedge all the way and we met a lady who lived not in our area but near to us and we knew her. She was a [pause] and she said, ‘You’d better get home, Beryl,’ she said, ‘The bombers are about.’ You know. She said, ‘What are you doing out?’ That’s how we had to hurry home.
RW: And what did your parents say when you got home?
BF: I don’t think, I don’t think I had a row. I don’t remember having a row. Yeah. Because I mean —
RW: And was that, I don’t suppose you can remember was that a genuine raid because sometimes the sirens —
BF: Oh yes, because we could see the planes.
RW: Right.
BF: As we were walking along the hedge we could see them going over. Yeah.
RW: So it was quite frightening then.
BF: Yeah. And you got to know the sound of them as well. You could pick them out. ‘Oh that’s German,’ you know.
RW: Really?
BF: But yeah, it was horrible. It was horrible thinking back now you know.
RW: Yeah.
BF: But you get you have to settle for what you’ve got don’t you Ruth, you know.
RW: Yeah. Gosh.
BF: My mother’s youngest brother was a paratrooper in the war. He’d landed on the Normandy beaches.
RW: Gosh.
BF: Albert. He was lovely. I loved him. Oh, he could sing.
RW: So he survived the war did he?
BF: Yes. He did. Yeah. Oh, he could sing like a dream. All my mother’s family could sing.
RW: Yeah.
BF: My daughter Susan can’t carry a tune. Neither could John. Oh, she growls [laughs] But Myra, she makes you cry when she sings.
RW: That’s nice.
BF: She’s got a wonderful voice. I’m not switched on am I? No.
RW: Well, Beryl, you’ve remembered an awful lot about your wartime experiences and it all sounded really quite difficult and frightening.
BF: It was. It was.
RW: But thank you very much for talking to us.
BF: Oh you’re welcome.