Page 21 - Once a copper 10 03 2020

Dad left school at fourteen and worked in factories as a ‘Machinist’ as a
lathe or capstan operator and as a polisher. At the outbreak of WW2 in 1939,
he was 15 years of age. He enlisted (under age) in the Royal Leicestershire
Regiment on 13th January 1942 and served in North Africa, where he was
captured in February 1943 during the battle for Kasserine Pass. He spent the
rest of the war in Prisoner of War camps in Italy & Germany.

In 1945, on his release from
the German P.O.W. camp,
Stalag IVG at Oschatz, he
started ‘courting’ my mom,
Betty whom he had known
from schooldays at Acocks
Green School on Warwick
Road. They were married on
24th November 1945 at The
Church of the Ascension, Hall
Green.

Figure 1 Jim & Betty's wedding day 1945

At the end of the war he was posted to
Germany as part of the Rhine Army maintaining
law & order, providing guard and escort duties
of German war criminals who were awaiting trial
and running camps for 42,000 displaced persons.

After discharge from the army in 1947, Mom and
Dad moved in with Moms parents, during which
time my eldest brother Peter was born (1947),
followed by John (1949). In 1952 the young family
moved to a large suburban council estate in a
district called Bartley Green, where son number 3 Figure 2 Dad, In Germany at the end of WW2
Anthony (Tony) was born 1954.

During this time Dad had a variety of jobs -sometimes simultaneously,
including polisher, milkman, bread delivery man and window cleaner!

In 1956 the family moved to 148 Grange Road, Small Heath. Living conditions
were damp, squalid and far worse and cramped than in Bartley Green, but
the rent was much less. I entered the world in March 1960.

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