- AIR RAID SIREN - 75 years ago this week,
Britain came under the heaviest attack in its history.
This was Hitler's Blitzkrieg, or lightning war.
During their nine-month bombing campaign,
the Nazis devastated cities and towns
across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
London bore the brunt of the initial raids.
But soon after, the Luftwaffe
began attacking other industrial centres.
I'm David Harewood.
And in this programme I'm finding out why
my home city of Birmingham became a target.
People genuinely thought that English society might end any day now.
I'll meet some of those who lived through the heaviest bombing of the war.
- So this is actually one of the German incendiary bombs? - Yes.
I'll discover the personal tragedies that history often forgets.
And I said to my auntie, "Is that true, what I've just heard?
"That Mum and Dad are dead?" And she just says, "Yes".
And I'll experience a view of my city that will stay with me forever.
Where I grew up as a child was right in the heart of it,
right in the middle of it, and that's quite fascinating.
I'm a Brummie, and extremely proud of it.
But like many people, I've never delved
into my city's history.
I've built an acting career appearing in dramas like Homeland,
playing fictional characters often caught up in terrifying global events.
But today's story is all too real.
And it couldn't be any closer to home.
'I now split my time between London and Los Angeles.
'But for a few days at least, I'm back in the West Midlands.'
I'm hoping this journey will educate me about the past
and reconnect me with my roots.
You know, I've obviously been back to Birmingham many times
to visit my family, Mum or Dad...
But it's strange, really. This is probably the first time
I feel I'm really coming back to visit the city.
I don't know if I've done that...
..ever.
AMERICAN VOICEOVER: This is my kind of town.
I grew up in 1970s Birmingham.
An exciting, confident place, with its sights set on the future.
I found the city exciting.
The modern buildings reflect its position as
the nation's industrial powerhouse.
You feel as if you've been projected into the 21st century.
The city has always seemed to be changing, developing, regenerating.
'Apart from the Small Heath district, that is.
'This area, where I grew up, has hardly altered at all.'
It's really strange to be back in the place where it all started.
Actually, THIS was my house.
This particular street, this stretch of the street,
was just full of kids round about my age,
and we were forever playing hide-and-seek until midnight,
the wee small hours.
And one of the best places to hide was...
..up there.
So we used to basically get up like this, and make our way
to the top of the wall and hide there for literally hours.
Like, 20 of us would just kind of cycle up to Small Heath Park
and just play all day long in the park,
just great memories of camaraderie, of friendship.
There were Irish kids, Indian kids, black kids, Jamaican kids,
all just playing together.
28 bus, I used to get that to school.
Interesting, really. As a kid growing up, you know,
I never really had a sense of...
of anything other than this place
just being a great place to play, but...
God, there used to be this gorgeous girl who used to live..
I think she used to live...in...
She used to live just opposite us. Absolute stunner.
Can't remember what her name was.
Used to... I think we'll stop right there!
Stop right there.
# Back to life, back to reality. #
'Happy times. And innocent times.
'Like all kids, I lived in the moment,
'and I certainly wasn't interested in dull stuff, like local history.'
The city I grew up in was all about clubs, music, girls.
I never really had a sense, growing up, of the war,
or the damage that Birmingham went through.
I mean, my parents got here in the '60s.
I wonder if they had any sense of the destruction
that Birmingham had gone through.
Probably not. By then, Birmingham's population was changing rapidly
with thousands of new arrivals who had never experienced the Blitz,
coming from the Caribbean and beyond, helping to rebuild Britain.
Birmingham's town planners were also busy,
clearing the bomb-damaged Victorian housing
to create a new city for a new age.
'By the time me, my sister and my two brothers arrived,
'the Birmingham of the Blitz had almost disappeared.'
- Hi, Mum. - Hi! You all right?
'Still, the war had been over for barely 20 years
'when my parents pitched up in Birmingham.
'Surely they had some sense of what had gone on here?'
So, when you arrived, was there any kind of physical evidence,
- any bomb damage, any...? - Not in the '60s, when I first came,
we didn't get that.
I mean, there were still remnants of what happened,
- like when we lived in Oldknow Road, remember? - Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We didn't know what that was, but then we found out
it was the remnants of a shelter in the back...
in the bottom of the garden.
Was there a sense that, you know, the city was on the up,
or was it quite, as you say, it was quite poor?
It was quite poor, to be truthful. It was quite poor.
I was surprised when I first came here to see that people were,
literally, as poor as we were in the Caribbean
and most people lived in one room.
- Not a whole house? - No, no! Not like today,
when you have kids and you want a whole house.
Most... A lot of people lived in one room.
But what a lot of things that they did do then that you don't see
much of now, they did a lot of sharing.
How do you mean by the sharing?
A cup of sugar or something like that. You know, people did get on,
people did help each other.
I suppose that could've been, again, a hangover from rationing, you know.
Yeah, I suppose so.
Well, it was lovely seeing my mum,
but as I suspected, she didn't really know too much about the war.
I guess, coming here in the '60s,
the Blitz really wasn't part of her story,
so it's going to be really interesting for me to go on
this journey to see if I really do have any connection
to that part of Birmingham's history.
To find out, I need to go back to November 1940, when another
Midlands city, Coventry, was flattened by Nazi bombers.
Words are hopelessly inadequate to describe the horror and indignation
felt all over the civilised world at this wanton devastation.
The Germans claimed this was revenge for the Allied bombing of Munich.
But it also marked a shift in their tactics,
widening the Blitz from London to other UK cities.
Coventry's harrowing experience was broadcast around the world,
but less well known is that
Birmingham's turn came just five days later,
with three consecutive nights of raids that
also killed hundreds of people.
Why did my city make it onto Hitler's target list?
I'm meeting up with aerial archaeologist Chris Going.
He has rare intelligence documents that the Germans
prepared before the war started
and they show precisely why Birmingham had to be bombed.
The single most important factory here in the Small Heath
part of town is this - it's the Birmingham Small Arms factory.
Close by, you've also got the Singer works.
Now, where are you on this map?
I lived on a place called Oldknow Road. It's right...
Hang on, let's find it. There it is. There it is. There it is.
It's actually just at the end of the road.
So, I would've been almost smack in the middle of a target.
You're wedged between two of the most important industrial
targets in Birmingham.
- Astonishing. - It is.
Birmingham wasn't the only important industrial centre
in the Luftwaffe's sights.
As the Blitz went on, they attempted to bring war production
to a halt by attacking Nottingham, Sheffield and Newcastle.
But alongside Coventry, Birmingham felt the full force.
Those first three nights of bombing left a trail of destruction
and the Nazis themselves took photographic evidence of their success.
- This is the day after those attacks. - Wow.
A is "zerstorung" - destruction.
They got the Singer works. Here's the BSA works.
When this photograph was taken, which was on the 23rd,
they would be... They'd still be bringing up the bodies.
It's astonishing to know that, actually, I grew up...
the house I grew up in was a target area for the German Luftwaffe.
- I had no idea about that. - Absolutely.
..1005...
'Now I've seen those German documents and photos,
'I want to view my city as their pilots did
'so Chris and I have come to Wellesbourne Mountford Airfield in Warwickshire
'to fly the actual routes the Luftwaffe took back in November 1940.
'Our pilot today is Bill Giles.'
OK, is everyone happy, comfortable, secure?
- Yes. - All good? - All good. - Great.
I've actually been flying quite a lot this year.
But about this time on a 747 or whatever, I'm normally fast asleep,
but taking off in something as small as this is really quite something.
Wow, look at that! Beautiful!
Fantastic visibility.
'The Blitz raids on Birmingham were mainly at night
'and I'm wondering how the crews would have navigated in the dark
'with limited geographical landmarks to go by.'
Early in the war,
they had a system which transmitted an acoustic signal
so if you flew to the left of the directional beam
they wanted you to fly along, you got an interrupted beep noise
and if you flew to the right of it, you got another tone.
When you were flying directly along the access of the beam
they wanted you to fly down, you got a continuous tone in your headphones.
So then you had a couple of other developments later in 1940.
British scientists effectively took on German scientists
to outwit the navigational processes they had
and what that meant, of course, ironically,
was as the German bombing accuracy lessened,
so the risk to the population at large grew.
I can actually start to see, if I'm not mistaken, Birmingham, right?
You can see Birmingham ahead of us. We're coming from the south-east.
You can see the Post Office Tower.
Also, you were saying that New Street Station was a target.
New Street Station was a target in October.
That is smack bang right in the middle of the town, isn't it?
It's bang in the middle. A beam was put right across it.
I had no idea just how exposed everybody would have been,
but you really see that from this perspective.
Well, it's interesting that you say that.
In December 1940, the Birmingham Post reported
that the bombing of Birmingham was as random as ever,
that the bombs were so scattered across the city,
they couldn't quite fathom what they were aiming at.
There, on your right, is Small Heath.
Here we are flying over the mighty Blues' ground,
was a gorgeous sight that is!
We're really going to fly directly over my road now,
which is this road here, Oldknow Road.
You can see my house, I know exactly where it is.
And this is the Singer factory, which was badly attacked in November
and there, that whole complex just to the south of the railway line,
- is the BSA works. - We are a stone's throw from the BSA works.
You are absolutely seconds away.
I had no idea growing up just how surrounded my road was
by major Second World War manufacturing plants.
It's easy to feel quite detached from up here,
I guess, thinking as a bomber to think that down there,
there are people working in factories,
working on things that really are going to destroy your countrymen.
You're not thinking about people,
you're just thinking about buildings, shapes in the dark.
You'd probably just be thinking about your target.
Get in, drop my ordnance and get home to my loved ones.
There is no personal feeling at all, you're just coming in, doing a job
and trying to get home.
'So I've now seen Birmingham from the point of view of the bombers.
'But what about those who were bombed?
'I've come to meet a survivor of the Blitz, Barbara Johnson.'
- Hello, David. - Hello, how are you? - Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
'Barbara was only five when the war started.
'She now visits schools, talking about her experiences
'and she has a treasure chest
'full of memorabilia from Birmingham's Blitz.'
My God! So, who would carry one of these around, then?
The wardens or the ARP men.
So you would hear that sound and everybody would run
and put their masks on?
Yes, put the gas mask on.
- So this is actually one of the German incendiary bombs? - Yes.
The majority of times, when they went off, they lost the tail,
but, fortunately for me, I've got one whole.
Sparks came out of there and set fire to buildings.
There's all the holes and sparks would come out of there.
- This is a child's gas mask, under fives. - Look at that!
And this one is for anybody over five and adults.
Issued to all civilians.
But we can't take them out the plastic cases
- because there's asbestos in the bottom. - Oh, right. Asbestos!
Asbestos. And we had them on our faces.
'Barbara was among nearly two million British children evacuated
'when the war started and one of 25,000 from Birmingham.
'The idea was to remove them from the area of danger
'and place them in safe havens. It didn't always work out that way.'
When I was five, I went on an evacuation to Evesham with my sister.
I was only there for a short while because I started wetting the bed
and the gentleman that we were there with,
he used to get his belt off and he used to lash the back of my legs.
- What?! - Every morning.
And in the end, he said I couldn't sleep in his bed any more
and he put me in a cubbyhole on a bag of straw
with a pillow and a blanket
and that's where I was to sleep, a five-year-old.
And my sister was eight, she was at school
and she was able to write a letter home to Mum
and she put in there that we were being treated badly
and so, in September '41, my mum came over to Evesham
and fetched us back.
'Like many evacuees, Barbara returned to the city
'just as the German bombing campaign was getting started.
'There was another unforgettable experience...
'for all the wrong reasons.'
We were all down the shelter and my dad didn't go to war
because he had a bit of a heart defect from rheumatic fever
so he used to do fire watching and he'd come and tapped the shelter
and Mum got out, but she never used to leave us
and she never came back and I thought, "Where has she gone?"
And then, on the evening, when Dad came home from work...
Sorry. When my mum and dad came home from work,
my mum sat us down and said, "Nana and Grandad have gone to heaven."
She didn't say they were killed, she just said they went to heaven.
- So do you actually have a picture of your grandparents? - Yes, I have.
- Oh, it's up there. - There it's there. - Right here.
That's the only one I've got.
Louisa and Harry.
She was 68, he was 72.
I feel as though I was robbed of my grandparents.
I loved them so much.
Before doing this programme,
I really didn't know to what extent
Birmingham had been affected by the Blitz
so this has been a real revelation to me.
I had no idea it was hit quite so hard.
Yes, because of the situation that we made everything in Birmingham -
Spitfires, bombs, you name it, we made it.
But it's a shame that Birmingham was forgotten.
It was quite an amazing experience in there, talking to Barbara.
She obviously still feels deeply the scars of war
and it's strange, I kind of decided to do this programme
because I thought maybe it would be interesting.
Actually, now, I feel as though I'm doing the programme
not just for myself, but for people like Barbara,
giving her a voice, really.
I've learned two things on this journey so far.
Firstly, that Birmingham's wartime citizens suffered more
than the rest of the country realised
and secondly, that many of us born in the city afterwards
are equally unaware of what they actually went through.
One thing I do remember from growing up in Small Heath, though,
is the sound of motorbikes coming from the BSA plans
just over the railway.
At its peak, BSA took up the whole
of the Armoury Road industrial estate.
It was the largest motorcycle producer in the world,
but the company started by making weapons and, during the war,
it turned out more than half the country's rifles and machine guns.
One of the jobs now being turned out in huge quantities
by munition workers is the Sten gun.
This is a light automatic, which can eventually be manufactured
at a cost of under £2.
In wartime, factories like this in and around Birmingham
were working around the clock,
making the weapons our troops needed so badly.
'Today, BSA's motorbikes are long gone,
'but it's still in the armoury business
'and factory manager David Williams
'is giving me a reminder of its illustrious past.'
- All right, Dave, if you'd like to come this way. - Right.
It'll be up on the top rack somewhere along here.
Here you are - Lee-Enfield carbine.
This is the type of gun used at the beginning
of the Second World War.
The Lee-Enfield, as you can see, the condition is actually perfect.
- It's got some weight to it, hasn't it? - Yeah.
It's a five shot because it's got one shot in the mag,
three in the bag and you bolt, shoot, fire, bolt, shoot, fire,
five shots and refill your mag.
So, these would have been used by soldiers
fighting in the Second World War.
Yeah, they started with these.
The Lee-Enfield was one of the most famous guns for the Second World War
and it carried all the way through.
You can make that gun today, do exactly the same thing
and it would be a lot lighter with different materials.
Brilliant Brummie engineering, that.
'As a Brummie, I can't help but feel pride in the skills
'of the local craftsmen and engineers
'that are so in evidence here.
'But it was those same skills that made the city a target.
'Carl Chinn is a local historian.'
This is a fascinating photo, David, because it's taken in April 1940.
We've got the King, King George V,
with Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, coming to the BSA.
Morale was crucial.
Britain is preparing for war
and one of the main centres of gun production in the country
was the Birmingham Small Arms - the BSA.
Do you know, I've only just got...
Birmingham Small Arms, I've only just got it in my head.
You're not on your own because, as Brummies, we tend to think BSA -
motorcycles or bikes, but particularly motorbikes, don't we?
And it grew into lots of different fields, hence why we tend
to overlook the fact that it remained a major producer of weaponry.
By the end of the Second World War,
400,000 people in Birmingham were involved in munitions work.
That was a higher proportion than anywhere else in the country.
Do you think the people, the workers and the factories,
realised how important their efforts were?
I'm certain they knew how important their efforts were,
but I think the people of Birmingham have been overlooked so long
in their contribution to the war effort
that it's important that that contribution is recognised.
As well as armaments,
Birmingham was a massive producer of military vehicles and aircraft.
At its height, the Spitfire plant in Castle Bromwich
turned out 50 planes a week.
Producers of British aircraft have already proved
that they turn out the best planes in the world.
They're now intent on proving
that Britain is first in quantity as well as in quality.
These are Spitfires in the making
and everybody knows what they have done for Britain,
thanks to the skill of British workers
as well as to the pilots themselves.
'It's incredible to think how much manufacturing was actually going on,
'but I've seen the target maps
'and I'm wondering how people kept working
'when the threat of bombing was so real.'
The idea that you were a target
and you were going to get bombed every night,
were people kind of frightened?
There must been a hell of a lot of fear amongst...
Obviously there was fear and that spirit
that kept the people of Birmingham going
was the same spirit that was shown across the country,
particularly in working class neighbourhoods
cos it was the working-class neighbourhoods
across Britain that were targeted
because the factories were cheek-by-jowl with housing.
So, you know, you're there in the factories,
you hear the air raid sirens.
Would everyone just immediately drop tools?
In many of the factories,
they didn't run into the shelter straightaway.
It was whether they could feel
that the air raid was coming closer and closer,
that's what happened at the BSA on 19th November.
The air raid began at 7.23pm and the sirens were sounded,
- but workers kept on working in the new building. - It's extraordinary.
Sadly, when the two bombs dropped at 9.25pm
and hit the southern end of the new building, it destroyed it.
Can you imagine it, David? All the machinery smashed all the place.
Pretty heavy machinery as well.
Heavy machinery crushing people, trapping people, killing people.
It must have been like a scene from Dante's Inferno.
The bombing of the BSA on 19th November
was one of the worst tragedies of the Birmingham Blitz.
The factory's own archive contains a harrowing account
written by an employee.
"Hundreds of workers at once make their way to the shelters
"but others, like myself, just take it as the siren -
"just the same siren we have heard scores of times in the past
"and continue with our work.
"Perhaps they will be driven off before they reach us.
"Perhaps this, perhaps that.
"But there is work to do... and money to be made.
"So we just carry on.
"Some workers shout out remarks -
"one saying, 'Coming early to see us tonight?'
"Another, more serious, says, 'Looks like a bad night coming.'
"The guns are still going, planes still rumbling overhead.
"Then comes a dull thud.
"Bright light stabs the darkness for a second.
"Then a rumbling noise,
"as though the whole building has been crushed
"with a pair of huge pincers.
"The one thing I had always thought would never happen had happened.
"A bomb had hit the outside wall
"and the whole building had collapsed,
"like a pack of cards.
"I think of my wife, Margaret, and I wonder what she will do
"when they tell her that I am gone."
I never knew the factories of Birmingham,
especially Small Heath,
were so vital to the war against the Nazis.
But there's much more to my old neighbourhood than industry -
in fact, it's home to something that, for me,
will always be priceless.
So, when I was growing up, my first love,
apart from the girl cross the road, and probably Julie Lynch,
was, is, and still remains the mighty Birmingham City.
Like the BSA factory, the ground is in Small Heath,
and I am wondering if they were still playing matches during the war
and if, in fact, the ground itself was bombed.
Onto the hallowed turf.
# Keep right on to the end of the road
# Keep right on to the end... #
I've arrange to meet sports historian Matt Taylor
and, I have to say, it's great to be back at St Andrews.
So, this isn't where the current squad
come onto the pitch, though, is it?
No, they used to, though,
and actually, the ground has changed a lot.
It's a lot smaller than it used to be.
It was much bigger before the war - in actual fact,
Birmingham had one of their biggest attendances in February 1939,
when 66,000 came to watch an FA Cup fifth round tie against Everton.
- Did we win? - No, I'm afraid you didn't.
And also Birmingham got relegated from the First Division that season.
Keep right on.
When Britain entered the war,
the government banned professional football,
but it soon realised the game was vital for morale,
so they relaxed the regulations.
Wartime football could be chaotic.
Many stars had been called up to serve abroad.
Those still at home played for the nearest club to their barracks.
But travel was restricted
and games were often called off because of air raids.
Plenty of matches did go ahead, though,
and in cities like Birmingham,
they must have come as a welcome diversion.
So, Birmingham got relegated at the start of the war.
Were they still playing football throughout the course of the war?
Well, they were, but not at St Andrews.
It was actually quite a controversial incident,
because it was up to the local chief of police
to decide if he considered
that there was too much danger
in putting on forms of entertainment and he decided
it was in such a dangerous position -
very close to the city centre, close to munitions and arms works
and it was very close to the railway lines.
And he decided, basically, not to allow the ground to open.
And how was that taken amongst the people of Birmingham?
Well, they weren't happy.
Directors made complaints
and supporters wrote letters to the local paper, saying things like,
"The chief constable is killing our Saturday afternoons."
It even led to questions in Parliament.
- I've got a copy here of a Hansard, from February 1940. - Here we go.
"Is my Right Honourable Friend aware
"that Birmingham is the only town in England
"where first-class football is disallowed,
"that all sections of the public in Birmingham are desirous
"that it should be permitted?"
So, basically, people were unhappy that, as you say,
they couldn't watch their Saturday afternoon sport, right?
Yeah, that's right, and in the end,
it was basically only the pressure
which, I think came right from the centre,
came from the Home Secretary,
and the fact that Birmingham was the only ground which was closed
at this time, the only first-class ground,
which, in the end, made the chief constable change his mind.
So Birmingham played their first match of the war just after that.
And was the ground actually hit during the war?
It was, actually, the chief constable was right.
It was hit on numerous occasions.
Eddie Hapgood, who was an Arsenal player
and an England player in the war, came to play a match here
and he talked about "bomb-scarred St Andrews",
and he said this was the most bomb-damaged ground
- of the Second World War. - Wow.
This journey into Birmingham's wartime past
gets ever more fascinating,
but no story on how the Midlands suffered during the Blitz
is complete without travelling 20-odd miles east, to Coventry.
When I was a kid, getting the bus to here from Small Heath
was as easy as going into Birmingham City Centre.
I know the place really well, but I've never seen it like this.
We are coming in from the angle
that most of the bombers from air fleets two and three
would have flown on the night attacks.
And the first attack which took place,
the night of the 14th and 15th of November,
was on Coventry, but the shock of this night attack,
the destruction that it inflicted on the town,
really changed the regional mood, as well as anything else.
On the 14th November, 1940, it became a city of destruction.
For three nights, the German bombers attacked in their fullest force.
This is introduced new word into the vocabulary of mass murder -
"to coventrate".
- There, you can see the modern cathedral. - Yeah.
- And you can see the nave of the burned-out cathedral. - Yes.
And this whole area, the 14th and 15th of November,
would have been a sea of flame.
The 11-hour raid on Coventry left the city in ruins.
The bombs destroyed more than 2,000 homes,
damaged nearly two-thirds of the city's factories,
and killed over 500 of its people.
This place of guilds and crafts and medieval ceremony,
into a rich trade town, into a great centre of industry,
into a burnt, bombed city,
it didn't die.
In front of the wing, you can see all of those buildings are post-war.
Yes, Chris, you can really see they are all modern buildings.
I hadn't really, um...got an appreciation of that,
just how much of it is post-war.
From this vantage point,
it's obvious that most of Coventry's centre has had to be replaced.
But, to be honest, I couldn't see many pre-war buildings
during my flight over Birmingham, either.
There is a definite feeling amongst the people I've talked to that,
whilst Coventry's suffering caught Britain's attention,
Birmingham's experience was somehow hidden from public view.
Is that true? And, if so, was there any official reason?
I am at the BBC Birmingham newsroom to meet media historian Mike Temple.
- ARCHIVE REPORT: - The martyred city of Coventry -
amid the wholesale wreckage of a noble city,
crushed by the force of hundreds of tons of bombs,
the steeple of her one-time beautiful 14th century cathedral
looks down on a scene of indescribable desolation.
I've remember going to Coventry as a kid and seeing, you know,
the destruction of the cathedral and reading about it.
But I don't remember hearing anything
about the destruction of Birmingham.
Well, many people didn't, because, of course,
Coventry and London were the two cities that were highlighted
and, you know, the experiences of Birmingham
were largely hidden behind a sort of...a wartime censorship.
So was there official censorship?
Cos I was under the impression that the reason that Birmingham
was not reported was because they had Spitfires there,
the BSA factory, they had all the munitions factories there.
Certainly, Birmingham was a key strategic target
for the Germans, a key industrial powerhouse,
if you like, of the UK and the Midlands.
So this was an official reason, but, of course,
another reason was not to spread fear and despondency.
So, in a sense,
it was almost what you might call positive censorship, right?
Yeah, that was a good way of putting it.
It was not censorship in the sense that someone was standing
over your shoulder all the time.
There was a great deal of self-censorship as well.
These pictures from the north-east area...
There, we have a reference to "the north-east area",
an example of the sort of voluntary censorship that was taking place.
Birmingham, typically, was described as "a Midlands town".
Manchester...the Manchester Guardian was not even allowed to report
that Manchester had been hit.
It was "an inland town in north-west England".
All this was supposedly designed so that the enemy wouldn't know
how successful or otherwise they had been.
What we are seeing is massive destruction in Coventry,
almost apocalyptic scenes of death and destruction -
if we contrast these with the pictures from Birmingham,
which don't have sound,
we see a slightly different view of the world.
So, what we're seeing here in Birmingham is not images
of death and destruction -
what we are seeing is images of "life will go on", if you like.
They are the phlegmatic British population -
we'll carry on, they'll move house,
they'll collect their water, they will get by.
These pictures are for different purposes.
Look, Joey still survives.
We will go on, the British way of life will continue.
Why would those pictures be broadcast like that?
It was necessary to create that myth, if you like,
of the British people all together,
the fact that whatever Jerry threw at us, we could take it.
We have to remember that in 1939, and especially by 1940,
it looked like Britain was losing the war.
The British people were in a situation where the mightiest,
perhaps the evilest political force world has ever known,
were poised at the other side of the Channel, ready to invade.
HE SPEAKS IN GERMAN
People genuinely thought that English civilisation,
English society, might end any day now.
Inevitably, in that particular time, there has to be some sort of control
over what's been said and what is being done.
The myth, if you like, of we're all in it together
is essential at a time of total war.
I had no idea
that the way Birmingham's Blitz experience was reported
was a key part of Britain's propaganda war.
No idea at all.
In my fictional role as head of counter-terrorism,
I learned all about covering up information for the greater good.
And I suppose the government of the day
were just doing exactly the same, thinking that, you know,
in order to keep up morale,
they should keep people relatively in the dark
about what was really, really going on.
But that was then.
And I think it's about time
Birmingham's contribution to the war effort
received a bit of acknowledgement, really.
I am nearing the end of my Blitz journey,
but before I finish,
I want to catch up with Barbara Johnson,
who I met earlier.
Oh, hi. Don't get up...
'She has invited me along to chat to some of her friends from BARA -
'the Birmingham air raid survival group.
'What stories they all have.'
How often did you have to go down into the shelters?
Was it every night, every other night?
Went every night, because we lived up on the second floor,
and, of course, when raids started,
you want to be in your shelter
as quickly as you could.
I mean, the noise of the bombs falling
must have been extraordinary.
- Oh, yeah, yeah. Definitely. - Can you remember that?
Yeah, quite frightening, really.
So, whose decision was it to go down into the shelters?
It was your parents'.
My mum used to leave our coats
and shoes ready for us
to put them on and run to the shelters as fast as we could.
My mum to make cocoa, she used to make six jugs of cocoa
and we got my grandad's old box on wheels
we used to go around with this box on wheels,
giving drinks of cocoa to the firemen,
because we had some hard winters during the war.
And in the winters, I've even heard their sleeves crack,
because they'd been frozen.
'Like Barbara, Mary has some painful memories
'of her wartime childhood.'
So, my two elder sisters and myself,
we were all evacuated.
- You didn't get to choose where you went? - Oh, no, no.
We just stood in the field, in a big, long row,
and then people from the village just came along and said,
"Come on, you can come with me. Come on, you can come with me."
And that is how it worked.
And they never thought, you know, "This is a family..."
Oh, no. I mean, they didn't even ask our names.
My two sisters went to other people
and I went to a lady named Mrs Bree.
That was terrifying, really, because I mean,
I was still only five years of age.
And then, one day,
this gentleman stepped out of a car
and he says, "I'm your uncle."
I'd never seen him before, I hadn't got a clue who he was.
And he says, "You're coming to live with us."
I was really scared, because I didn't know the people.
They just had one daughter
and I thought, "Well, what's going to happen to me?"
And I kept asking my aunt,
"When's Mum and Dad coming to fetch me?"
And she continually said, "Soon as the war is over,
"they'll be coming.
"They'll bring you a lovely pram and a doll."
So, of course, that pleased me.
So, I reached about 11 or 12.
I was in the local fish and chip shop,
and I overheard two ladies talking
and they were sort of nodding in my direction.
"Oh, that's the little girl whose mum and dad and sisters got killed."
So, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing.
So, I ran over home and I said to my aunt,
"Is that true, what I've just heard -
"that Mum and Dad are dead?"
And she just said, "Yes."
And I just ran upstairs and I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed,
and I thought, "I'm never going to see them again", you know.
It was terrible. It really was.
How...how...?
HE CLEARS HIS THROAT
How long was it, um...until you met your sister?
Time went on and, um...
I just asked my aunt and uncle about my sisters, my two elder sisters.
And they did eventually follow them up.
But we never had anything in common, because we'd all been split up.
- Thank you so much for that. - Thank you.
Appreciate it.
'I'm an actor, but when you hear stories like that'
you realise that real life can be much more raw and emotional
than any drama.
I want to end my journey with a visit to The Tree Of Life -
a monument that those ladies
campaigned to have put on public display.
On its base are the names of the victims of Birmingham's Blitz,
including Barbara Johnson's grandparents.
Oh, there they are - the names of her grandfather and grandmother.
Having met Barbara yesterday
'and held a picture of her grandparents,
'I have some kind of physical connection to it, so...'
Yeah, it's quite...
It's quite moving, when you think about it.
I've recognised it really is a tough resolve of people
in this city
and you look at how modern it is now,
you look around and see how it is continuing to evolve
and continuing to grow.
It makes you feel enormously proud
that...not only have we come through an incredibly traumatic experience,
but we continue to move forward.
It makes you feel enormously proud
and I think we owe that generation of people
a tremendous debt of gratitude,
because they showed incredible strength
and, if it weren't for them, perhaps,
you know...we'd maybe be facing a very, very different history.
# Why do you whisper, green grass?
# Why tell the trees what ain't so?
# Whispering grass, the trees don't have to know... #