The Bomb WW2 by Roy Blakey

When I was about ten years old I remember Mom and I visiting our aunt Beatrice's back to back, we did this about once a month.  The house was situated in aston (the date would have been around 1941 and I think that the house was in Miller Street). When we arrived we could see that the house had taken a direct hit and aunt Beat told us that the damage had happened the night before. To be observed was a hole in the roof, a hole through the middle of her bed, an angled hole slicing through the staircase wall and a hole right beside the big black oven downstairs. Fortunately, on the night of this particular bombing raid she and our Uncle Jim, her husband had taken to the public air raid shelter just down the road.
I remember sitting in the kitchen with Mom and aunt Beat and seeing this fair size hole beside the roaring hot oven which had the usual stew pot boiling away on top of the hob. We had a bit of stew together and then, a little while later Mom and I came away.
aunt Beat and Uncle Jim continued to live in the house by day and slept in the public shelter by night
about three days after we had visited, an air raid warden came to aunt’s house to see if she and her husband where coping alright. He had a look at the damage to the house and then observing the hole beside the oven he asked "What did they take out of the hole then?" to which aunt answered "There's nothing been taken out".  The warden immediately evacuated aunt from the house, called the police and the bomb disposal unit, and right under the oven they found an unexploded five hundred pound German bomb.
aunt Beat and Uncle Jim came to stay with us for a while until things got sorted out. around the same time Dad, Mom and my two younger brothers where living in Kingstanding and at night during and after the air raids we could see, looking towards aston the red glow in the sky reflecting off the clouds as aston and the city took the bomb hits and the resulting fires.
I remember also a regular next morning trip was made by people going to the local police station to look at the bulletin board posted outside the station, to check the names of people put on the board. The bulletin board would list names of unfortunate people from other parts of the city who had either been injured or had lost their homes. People would be obviously looking for relatives or friends that might be listed. Bearing in mind that ordinary working folk at this time did not have house to house telephone facilities.
as has been said many times the help and togetherness of people during the war was outstanding.                    

Roy Blakey