The Midlands How We Won the War


The Midlands

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September 3rd 1939, and families all over the country

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-flock to their radios...

-I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received

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and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.

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In that brief moment life in our country changed forever.

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World War II had begun but victory wouldn't be assured by military might alone.

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The Blitz, evacuation, rationing, the loss of loved ones -

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the war on the home front meant that everyone had to do their bit.

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From the country's women, who took on everything - farming, factory work, even flying spitfires -

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to the nation's auxiliary firemen who worked through the terror of countless air raids,

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this is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

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This is How We Won The War.

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In this series I'm touring the country,

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exploring how different parts of the United Kingdom made unique contributions

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to the war effort here at home.

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I will be looking at the lives of ordinary citizens

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and the incredible efforts they went to throughout the war years.

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Today I've left Yorkshire behind me

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and I'm heading into the heart of the Midlands

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and the industrial cities of Nottingham and Birmingham.

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On today's programme I will be hearing how thousands of American paratroopers

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affected the pretty girls of Nottingham.

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Nearly all the men had gone to war, hadn't they?

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Anything in a uniform would be attractive to any of them.

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Discovering how the factory workers of Birmingham provided just about everything our troops needed.

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You name it we made it.

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Fifty per cent of all small arms used by the British forces in the war were made by the BSA.

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And finding out about the war efforts of a group of women

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who kept essential supplies flowing on our waterways.

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We stuck on the mud, we broke ropes, we banged into things.

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We did everything you could conceivably imagine wrong.

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On December 7th 1941

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the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

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left more than 2,000 dead and destroyed over 20 ships.

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The disaster brought America into the war.

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At home the Allies' plans for the invasion of Europe began.

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By 1944, millions of American troops had arrived in Britain.

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More than 2000 men of the 508th parachute regiment were billeted here

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at Wollaton Hall in Nottingham.

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Turning the grounds into a sea of tents,

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the troops would have a profound and lasting impact on the community.

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Jonathan Keeling is a local historian

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with a passion for bringing the story of the American GIs to life.

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Together with a team of re-enactors,

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he's recreating the scene that would have greeted the people of Nottingham.

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-I suppose a sense of circus coming to town for the locals.

-Quite literally.

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One of the paratroopers actually referred to it as the Wollaton Zoo

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because people just came from miles around to see these,

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what they saw as being movie stars.

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How many of them would have seen a building like the hall?

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Few to none. When they first saw this, they thought it was actually Nottingham Castle.

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Local youngsters were particularly taken with the new arrivals.

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They were like a breath of fresh air,

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because they brought this city to life.

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They just come out of our comics the picture books we used to read which depicted soldiers at war.

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So we thought it had all come to life when the Americans came.

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Having endured four years of rationing,

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many people were astonished by the American troops' plentiful supplies.

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The Americans were the richest country in the world

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and they were just basically pumping equipment and food stocks over here.

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So the Americans had a lot of cool stuff.

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Everywhere you went you could approach an American soldier

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and you'd say "Have you got any gum, chum?"

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And he'd dole some out for you,

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so you could take pockets of the stuff

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because they had an abundance of everything.

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And my sisters, they were teenagers, about 18,

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and of course they were much in demand to attend their dances at the local church hall.

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And they'd occasionally invite them home for tea

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and they would always bring some nice tinned fruit from America

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or nylons for the girls, of course, which were virtually unobtainable.

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One paratrooper was surprised at the way local children reacted

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to the food he took for granted.

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He was eating an orange and just throwing the peel on the floor.

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He heard a noise and when he turned, he saw the local children actually eating the orange peel

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and realised that these children had never seen oranges before.

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So from that day on he went into town with his pockets bulging with oranges

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and every time he saw a child he used to pass an orange to the child.

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Kath Price was 15 and working in a local cafe

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but for the Americans she served, food was a secondary concern.

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What they did, they put the apple pie on top of their dinner

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and ate it like that and I said, "Oh, no! No!"

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"Oh, yeah." And all of them did the same.

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That was how they ate their meal

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because they couldn't wait to get out of the cafe to get to the Palais to see the pretty girls.

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All the girls loved the Americans.

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They were immaculately dressed.

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It was natural the girls would make a beeline for them.

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They were all healthy young men and they loved to go out and dance.

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The Palais and the Victoria Ballroom were always full of all these girls.

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Nearly all the men had gone to war, hadn't they?

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Anything in a uniform would be attractive to any of them.

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But their very popularity led to occasional tensions.

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There was a lot of people who had a hate for them

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because they did loving and kissing on the streets

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and things that they'd never seen before.

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Sure, there were incidents in the town, there were fights. LAUGHTER

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But they had their own military police, the Snowdrops with their white helmets,

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and they hit first and asked questions afterwards.

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The American troops' apparent wealth and looks may have caused resentment among a few

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but when they asked the people of Nottingham for their help,

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they gave it willingly.

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The only thing they didn't have was a laundry,

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so what they started doing was drifting out into town

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and asking people - banging on doors - and asking people to wash their clothes in exchange for food.

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People accepted them into their homes.

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They had them for Christmas and birthdays and things like that.

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The people loved them.

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Some of the paratroopers realised when they came here and they were adopted by the families

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that this was something they were missing.

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Two years they'd been away from their own families

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and now they were getting the family back

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and this is what Nottingham gave them.

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But overnight things changed when the camp at Wollaton Park was put on lock-down.

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Unable to get out, the troops turned to the Nottingham youngsters

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and tasked them with night-time missions into town.

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They loved fish and chips - our national dish.

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So we'd bring them back and they'd give us a call sign to shout out when we got near their area

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and it was "Sing, baby, sing." JULES LAUGHS

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And we thought it was great fun.

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And sure enough, hands came out through the fence, took the chips.

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But history was in the wind for the GIs of Wollaton Park.

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Few of them could be sure they would make it through what was to come.

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My dad came and woke us up in bed.

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He got us out of bed and he said. "Come on

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"because this is a sight you will never, ever see again in your life."

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And we saw all the Dakotas pulling the gliders.

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And then we knew that this was D-Day.

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That's something that I will never forget.

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RADIO: D-Day has come.

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Early this morning the Allies began the assault

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on the north-western face of Hitler's European fortress.

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Under the command of General Eisenhower,

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Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces,

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began landing Allied armies this morning

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on the northern coast of France.

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The 508th endured 40 days of ferocious fighting,

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providing vital support to the D-Day landings.

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But they suffered over a thousand casualties, including 307 killed in action.

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It broke my heart when I heard how many were killed.

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We took them into our hearts

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and the people of Nottingham will never forget them.

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They're a part of the city.

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The legacy left behind by the American soldiers went beyond broken hearts.

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All over the country, children were born to GI fathers they would never know.

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Birmingham lass Shirley McGlade was one.

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My mum, her name's Lily, she was single.

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She wanted to be a Land Girl but she had to do factory work.

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The only pleasure she had was when she used to go out dancing.

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She absolutely loved dancing.

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And then the one day, she saw this GI come over.

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But she'd been warned by my nan,

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"They stay away from them, they're bad. You'll get yourself into trouble."

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And he came over and he asked her to dance. He walked her home.

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Asked if he could see her again and she said yes.

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But she said, "He was so nice-looking, I didn't think I'd see him again," you know.

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They did meet again and the relationship blossomed

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but war forced them apart and Shirley never met her father.

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I'd always been told that he was an American

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but he was a brave American that died on D-Day.

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And that satisfied me for a while

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but then as I got older, little things kept coming out.

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Shirley's date of birth - September 1945 -

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meant her father couldn't have been killed on D-Day.

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When she realised, she confronted her mother.

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I said to her, "Can you tell me the truth now, please?"

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And she gave me his name. She told me he came from Idaho.

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My dad's mum was French

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and I excelled at French at school because I wanted to...

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In my little childish head I was going to go to America,

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knock on the door and speak to her in French.

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And I thought, "I can't let this lie,"

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so that's how I got involved in my search for him.

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Some estimates claim up to 100,000 babies were born to GIs in the UK

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but Shirley's efforts were to help others before they helped her.

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In my search for my own dad,

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I had publicity in newspapers, television, radio

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and I think I found 13 fathers before I found my own

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and I thought, "Maybe this is what I'm on the earth for, you know,

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"just to find other people's dads."

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Shirley spent years trying to find her father.

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But it was an interview with a radio station in the States

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that eventually produced a breakthrough.

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I spoke to this radio guy and he had actually been talking to my dad.

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You know, I just couldn't believe it.

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Shirley finally met her father at the age of 41

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and a documentary team recorded one of their meetings.

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I feel very strongly about it

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and there's no way - you just don't deny family.

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Regardless of how it came about, you just don't deny family.

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When I first saw him I just couldn't believe...

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It was really weird, because like you know a film star or someone, you've got...

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They're set up but they're not real.

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And like when I first saw my dad he was like flesh

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and he hugged me and I hugged him back

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and I thought, "My God, he's real, he's solid."

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I was fascinated because suddenly he was there, he was real.

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Shirley saw her father only a handful of times before he died

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and her mother passed away before a reunion was possible.

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But she'd never forgotten her wartime lover.

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When Dad sent me a load of photographs,

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my mum looked through them and she said, "That's not your dad, that's an old man."

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In her mind he was always that black and white picture that was on the bedside table.

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She really loved him.

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The GIs were essential to our eventual success in World War II

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but they were only one aspect of the war effort.

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By 1945 half of Birmingham's population were engaged in war production,

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more than any other city in the country.

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The determination of the people here

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to carry on regardless of the hardships and the dangers they faced

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to me really embodies the spirit of the Midlands.

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As a region it has been rightly regarded as the engine room of British industry.

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ARCHIVE: The constant drone of machinery in our aircraft factories

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is the music of victory.

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With the confidence of experts, they set about the job of shaping the raw metals from the foundries

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into the components of more than 1,000 horse powered demons of the air.

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We used to boast that you could buy anything you wanted in Birmingham

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and it was made here, from a pin to a brass bedstead,

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from a button to a car.

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And in the Second World War, that diversity of trades was crucial for the war effort.

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People associate Birmingham particularly with Spitfires.

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But it wasn't just the Spitfire factory.

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Hudson's whistles, making the whistles for the army.

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Jewellers getting involved in making intricate and small parts.

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Turner Brothers of Summer Lane,

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making the jigs and tools for aircraft production.

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You name it, we made it.

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At the heart of that incredible output was BSA Birmingham Small Arms factory.

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With plants all over the country, its Small Heath branch produced

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many of the weapons used by front-line troops.

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Well, here we've got just a selection of some of the classics

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that this factory would have produced during the war.

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Can we pick some of these up?

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Yeah, this is an Enfield, a Lee-Enfield MkIII.

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One and a quarter million of them made by the BSA in the war.

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One and a quarter million!

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50% of all small arms used by the British forces in the war were made by the BSA.

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-That's extraordinary, isn't it?

-There's another one.

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Now, that looks very interesting. What have we got there?

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-This is a Sten gun.

-How many of these were produced?

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Over half a million of these were produced.

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And one of the major reasons that they brought them out

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was to be able to use captured German ammunition, nine millimetre bullets.

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Such ingenious designs made the industry of the Midlands essential to the war effort

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but it also made the area an obvious target for the Luftwaffe.

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Not only are these workers going to work during the most difficult conditions,

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they're having to cope with bombs dropping all over them,

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because the factories were cheek by jowl with housing

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and what the Nazis in the end realised and wanted to do

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was not only bomb the factories but try to bomb the spirit out of the British people.

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They failed.

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All over the country, people wrote about their Blitz experiences

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as part of the Mass-Observation project.

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Held at the University of Sussex,

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it offers an insight into the everyday lives of ordinary people

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throughout the war years and beyond.

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On November 14th 1940, 500 German bombers pulverised Coventry,

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leaving hundreds dead and more than a thousand injured.

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Tom Harrison, Mass-Observation director, reached the city the next day

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and described the aftermath.

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"Most of Friday I was moving in a city of the dark.

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"I have spent a good deal of my life listening to other people talk,

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"but I have never heard people talk less than in Coventry yesterday.

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"Many walked through the city rather blankly looking at the mess,

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"and the commonest remark was simply, 'Poor old Coventry.'

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"The commonest sound was the scraping of shovels and the shifting of rubble.

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"The centre of the town reminded me more of photographs of Ypres in the last war.

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"As soon as darkness fell, the streets went silent.

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"The people of Coventry had gone to shelter.

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"I needn't say that the ARP and AFS people were wonderful, too.

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"I was particularly impressed by the number of boys

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"some of them can't have been more than fourteen

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"who'd been working as messengers and rescue-work helpers all the way through.

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"Everyone seemed to be helping, even a very old, excessively dirty navvy,

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"who, on the day of the bombing, when everybody was feeling pretty low,

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"walked round and round the streets singing at the top of his voice.

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"Everybody he passed, however depressed they were,

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"couldn't help smiling and laughing at him,

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"even if they only said, 'I'm glad he feels like that. I wish I did.'"

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Back in Birmingham, the BSA Factory at Small Heath was hit by two bombs

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on the night of November 19th 1940.

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EXPLOSIONS

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Can you imagine the devastation that those two bombs would have?

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It was terrifying.

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The building, an eye-witness said, just seemed to disintegrate.

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There was a mass of rubble and masonry and girders just collapsing.

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And there was some unbelievable acts of heroism.

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There's one story of the men who tried to get through

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to three men and women who were trapped.

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And the Home Guard men were using the butts of their rifles

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to dig into and through the rubble.

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But there was a girder in the way,

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so they brought him oxyacetylene and he burned a gap through the girder.

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Now, the three men were on the floor hunched up nearest the girder.

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Do you know what they did? Do you know what them men did, them working men did?

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They lay on the floor, in the most ultimate act of gentlemanliness,

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so that the woman who was at the back could crawl over them and get out first.

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That's what they did.

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And it's that spirit that really defines Birmingham

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as a centre of raw production through the worst of times.

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It defines Birmingham but I think it defines Britain and the United Kingdom.

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To manufacture the weapons of war,

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BSA and other factories all over the country relied on a constant supply

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of huge quantities of raw materials.

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But with the railway system already running at full stretch,

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the Government sought to make use of every other available means of transportation

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and that included Britain's aged canal network.

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I'm going to catch a ride on the Yeoford,

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a restored 1930s narrow boat,

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just like those that carried cargo during the war years.

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And accompanying me on my trip is canal expert Tom Chaplin.

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The Grand Union Canal is a 300-mile waterway system

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made up of several smaller canals connected together in January 1929.

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During the war this route was essential to help get materials and goods

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between the industries of the Midlands and the docks of London.

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Tom, what kind of state were Britain's canals in before the outbreak of war?

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That's rather a mixed question, because in those days,

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a lot of the railway-owned canals were in poor condition

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but some of the private ones were in very good condition

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and in particular, what is now the Grand Union Canal was in very good condition.

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And this is a typical example of a Grand Union boat, built in 1937.

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So just at the outbreak of war, the canal had been improved

0:19:490:19:52

and there was a new fleet of boats there ready to work.

0:19:520:19:55

But how do we go about coping with the increased traffic on the canal system?

0:19:550:20:00

There was always a shortage of boatmen

0:20:000:20:02

because being a boatman was actually very much a skill.

0:20:020:20:06

And the boatmen were taken off to fight.

0:20:060:20:09

So a lot of women came off the land

0:20:090:20:12

and went on the boats for the first time

0:20:120:20:14

and were trained to handle the boats.

0:20:140:20:17

And that really was quite a thing,

0:20:170:20:19

to come from a typical village or a town

0:20:190:20:22

and then suddenly go into a boat,

0:20:220:20:24

into a completely different way of life.

0:20:240:20:26

Adapting to the living conditions was one thing

0:20:260:20:29

but the women also had to learn new skills,

0:20:290:20:31

including how to operate hundreds of locks.

0:20:310:20:35

If you were going through a flight of locks, like Hatton, 21 locks,

0:20:350:20:39

and a boat comes up behind, he wants to overtake.

0:20:390:20:42

So if you were a minute slow up the lock,

0:20:420:20:45

you held them up by 20 minutes behind.

0:20:450:20:47

Delivering goods on time was essential

0:20:470:20:50

but to make a living, the women also had to learn the tricks of the trade.

0:20:500:20:53

They got paid so much per ton for a given journey.

0:20:530:20:57

But if you put too many tons on, it would slow you down

0:20:570:21:00

because you were too close to the bottom.

0:21:000:21:03

So the working boatmen, the people who'd done it all their life,

0:21:030:21:06

they knew just how many tons to put on for the maximum speed for the maximum tonnage.

0:21:060:21:10

So they could lose out on that.

0:21:100:21:12

And also balancing the boat so it steers well.

0:21:120:21:14

Those are the arts that take a generation - you learn from your parents.

0:21:140:21:19

But as the war progresses the girls get better

0:21:190:21:21

and I would hope they got some at least begrudging respect.

0:21:210:21:24

Oh, yes, they did.

0:21:240:21:26

What was typical of boatmen at that time -

0:21:260:21:28

they respected you if you could handle the boat well.

0:21:280:21:32

They then became a member of the club, if you like. JULES LAUGHS

0:21:320:21:36

One such woman was Jean Peters,

0:21:370:21:39

who was just 20 when she signed up in 1944.

0:21:390:21:43

Now, that's a wonderful picture.

0:21:430:21:44

Poking your head out of the side of the boat.

0:21:440:21:47

-How long had you been on the boat by that time?

-A week.

0:21:470:21:49

-And how much training did you get?

-We had two trips.

0:21:530:21:57

We did one of three weeks and then a second one of three weeks.

0:21:570:22:01

This was actually our training boat

0:22:010:22:03

and I was learning how to clean the engine.

0:22:030:22:07

You look very happy in your work.

0:22:090:22:10

Somebody called me and I put my head out to see who it was.

0:22:100:22:14

And do you remember, Jean, that first trip that you undertook after training?

0:22:140:22:18

I do indeed.

0:22:180:22:20

Because we'd done very well on our training

0:22:200:22:23

and we hadn't got into any particular trouble.

0:22:230:22:27

But when we went on my first trip on our own,

0:22:270:22:31

we stuck on the mud, we broke ropes, we banged into things.

0:22:310:22:35

We did everything you could conceivably imagine wrong.

0:22:350:22:40

But we did get our load up to Birmingham eventually.

0:22:400:22:43

The typical route for the canal girls

0:22:450:22:47

was to transport steel, aluminium or copper from the London docks

0:22:470:22:50

to the factories of Birmingham.

0:22:500:22:52

From there they would travel to Coventry to collect coal,

0:22:520:22:55

which they delivered back to London.

0:22:550:22:57

The canals were carrying ten to 12 million tons a year at that time.

0:22:570:23:01

But what was bothering the government was

0:23:010:23:03

if a bomb dropped on a strategic railway,

0:23:030:23:06

that would block all the way into London.

0:23:060:23:07

So a lot of this was alternatives,

0:23:070:23:09

making sure there were always two forms of transport.

0:23:090:23:12

Here we are coming into the centre of modern Birmingham, Tom,

0:23:120:23:15

a very different view to what we would have had 70 years ago.

0:23:150:23:18

Oh, definitely and even 50 years ago.

0:23:180:23:21

This block of flats here used to be stables

0:23:210:23:23

and this used to be a builder's merchant wharf here

0:23:230:23:26

and they used to collect refuse

0:23:260:23:27

that went down to the tips out at Smethwick.

0:23:270:23:29

So, yes, this was always humming with boats,

0:23:290:23:32

bringing coal in, building materials.

0:23:320:23:35

The landscape may have changed

0:23:360:23:38

but Jean's training as an artist helped her create a unique record

0:23:380:23:42

of life on the canals during the war.

0:23:420:23:44

Now this is a very dramatic image

0:24:100:24:12

and it says "re-stacking cargo - aluminium."

0:24:120:24:14

What's going on in here?

0:24:150:24:16

Our boat had hit a bridge and the cargo slipped

0:24:160:24:20

and we had too much weight at one end of the boat,

0:24:200:24:24

so it was going too low in the water.

0:24:240:24:27

So the boaters said you've got to get under the covers

0:24:270:24:30

and restack that otherwise you'll sink.

0:24:300:24:33

And so that's what we did.

0:24:330:24:35

We put a hurricane lamp up and then we just had to restack it all

0:24:350:24:40

so that it wasn't unbalanced.

0:24:400:24:43

As well as difficult cargo,

0:24:430:24:45

Jean remembers the harsh winter of 1944 to '45.

0:24:450:24:50

The locks and the canal began to freeze

0:24:500:24:53

and we were a bit scared of being caught by the ice...

0:24:530:24:59

where there wasn't a pub that we could go to get a drink!

0:24:590:25:02

-JULES LAUGHS

-Yeah.

0:25:020:25:04

Or there wasn't somewhere where we could get a bath or a wash or something.

0:25:040:25:09

And I nearly met my Waterloo then,

0:25:090:25:11

because the canal locks had steps running up to the top of the lock

0:25:110:25:17

where you had to run up to shut or open the gates.

0:25:170:25:21

I jumped off the boat and ran up the steps, slipped

0:25:210:25:26

and went all the way down the steps and into the canal.

0:25:260:25:29

And fortunately the girls who were, you know, on the boats,

0:25:290:25:35

noticed that I'd disappeared and came and fished me out.

0:25:350:25:38

In serving on the canals, were there moments where you felt detached from the war?

0:25:380:25:42

Well, I don't think we thought about it a great deal,

0:25:430:25:46

because you had to get on and get on with what you were doing.

0:25:460:25:49

You didn't have time to think about war efforts or anything else.

0:25:490:25:53

Occasionally the war would intrude upon us

0:25:530:25:56

and one of those sort of occasions

0:25:560:26:00

would be when we went down to the London docks.

0:26:000:26:03

There was a buzz bomb dropped at the back of some sheds

0:26:030:26:07

just near where we were tied up

0:26:070:26:09

and it made the lock shake, you know, and the boats rock

0:26:090:26:15

and fell us out of bed, really.

0:26:150:26:17

Kay said, "Well," she said,

0:26:170:26:20

"I shall put on a cup of cocoa if this nonsense goes on any longer."

0:26:200:26:24

-So all very matter of fact.

-Very matter of fact, yes.

0:26:240:26:27

As she travelled the waterways

0:26:270:26:30

Jean realised the youngsters among the boat people who worked the canals

0:26:300:26:34

had limited opportunities for an education.

0:26:340:26:37

She was asked to produce an alphabet book for the children.

0:26:370:26:41

And I made all the different letters

0:26:410:26:44

mean something that would mean something to them.

0:26:440:26:47

For instance, like R for rope and B for boat.

0:26:470:26:52

The thing that strikes me about Jean and her contemporaries is

0:27:090:27:13

the modesty with which they account for their efforts during the war.

0:27:130:27:16

The truth is without them the country may literally have ground to a halt.

0:27:160:27:21

As part of Britain's vast citizen army,

0:27:210:27:23

there is no doubt that they certainly played their role

0:27:230:27:26

in helping to break Hitler's grip on Europe.

0:27:260:27:28

Next time on How We Won The War,

0:27:340:27:36

I'll be trying my hand at using a weapon

0:27:360:27:38

dreamt up by armchair scientists

0:27:380:27:40

under the direction of Churchill himself.

0:27:400:27:43

-How's your throwing arm?

-Well, cricket was never my strong point

0:27:430:27:46

-but you never know!

-We'll see.

0:27:460:27:49

-Uncovering a dark side to Britain's propaganda unit.

-MAN SPEAKING GERMAN ON RADIO

0:27:490:27:54

By being all for Hitler, and really pro him,

0:27:540:27:57

they're managing to insert stories

0:27:570:27:59

which will undermine the German morale.

0:27:590:28:02

And recreating valuable work carried out

0:28:020:28:05

by some of the youngest troopers on the home front.

0:28:050:28:08

Everybody ready to get their hands dirty?

0:28:080:28:10

Yes!!

0:28:100:28:12

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:28:130:28:15

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