First Aid Practice
NextBackMum was a nurse at the First Aid post in the old cookery school, opposite our house. When my mum was in training they had training sessions every week and I used to go with her. They had a big practice on a Sunday and all the local kids joined in. They used to make us up with putty and red paint so that it looked as if we had terrible wounds. Then we would be carted off to an air-raid shelter to be rescued, brought back to the First Aid post and bandaged up. It was a big event for us.” “My dad used to work at the Report Centre at the old Council House on the corner of Salop Road and Mount Pleasant. There were five manning the Report Centre, all well-known in Redditch. There was my father, Jack Arnold, Jo Edkins who ran the post office in Mount Pleasant, Les Biggs the greengrocer whose wife was Elsie Biggs, the dancing teacher, and the Lewis twins. My father sounded the siren on 11th December 1940; that was the night Redditch was bombed. He was also a stretcher bearer at the First Aid post in the old cookery school. So as soon as somebody turned up to take over the Report Centre he had to dash down to the First Aid post. My mother couldn't take up her nursing duties at night because I was only nine. We moved into our house three weeks before 11 th December; that evening, my mother was ironing and I was doing my homework when we heard the whistle of a bomb and a bang. My parents always told me that when the planes came over they were going to bomb the BSA, so I said to my mum, 'Do you think that was the BSA? She said, 'No, that was a lot nearer than the BSA, get your hat and coat on'. She opened the back door and we carried on what we were doing.
