The day the balloon came down

It was 1940, before the air raids on Birmingham began. My dad had finished installing the Anderson air raid shelter and was trying to make it more comfortable than the curved pieces of corrugated iron, set in the cold damp earth, would warrant. He’d laid a concrete floor, just two days before the incident.
There was a barrage balloon site at the end of the road, in a recreation ground belonging to a factory. We’d see it go up occasionally, though much of the time it was tied down. The whole set up was regarded as a comfortable billet for the RAF men who manned it.
Then one night, we were about to go to bed and we heard constant crashings outside, very close. It had to be enemy action, we felt. So my mother gathered together the case she kept with birth certificates and other documents and blankets, she put the leash on our big curly coat retriever, Rags, and said we’d better go down the shelter. Dad said we couldn’t as his cement wasn’t set. Nonsense said mum “that’s what it’s there for”! Dad disappeared into the dark and the debris for something to cover his not quite set cement. The crashing continued and we hurried to the shelter, Rags in tow. Dad was already down there waving a flashlight about, bits of wood in hand. “Keep Rags off the floor “ said my dad as we struggled to get Rags down the short ladder into the shelter. Rags preferred the floor. The bits of wood wobbled and she left big paw prints in the softish cement.
Dawn came, and we found that the balloon with its thick cable had come down and was waving side to side at chimney level knocking down big old chimney pots and brickwork of the old houses at the end of the road. When the cable was wound in, it caused more damage, though we knew it was “friendly fire”. It turned out this was the worst damage that we sustained during the whole of the war, and we lived in a target area.
In 1946 we took out the shelter, leaving behind the slab with the paw prints. I can always picture a dig in future centuries and archaeologists thinking they have a find!

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