Daughter writes book of mothers journey during WW2
Scrapes with death, romance, heartbreak, spies, humour and bizarre experiences all feature in a West Midlands woman's account of her mother's life on the home front in Worcestershire and Birmingham during the Second World War.
Scrapes with death, romance, heartbreak, spies, humour and bizarre experiences all feature in a West Midlands woman's account of her mother's life on the home front in Worcestershire and Birmingham during the Second World War.
Imagine you are 15, you have just heard war has been declared and your father loads three bullets into his First World War revolver, pledging that if the Germans come he will shoot you, your mother and himself.
That's just what happened to Pamela Wheeler, in the deathly hush after she heard Neville Chamberlain's frightening broadcast, at the Woodman Hotel in Clent, near Stourbridge, which was then kept by her parents, Sidney and Marie Wheeler.
Now aged 87 and living in Worcester Road, Bromsgrove, Pamela – whose surname is now Moore – has recounted her memories to her daughter, Cherryl Vines, from Stourbridge, who has written a 128-page book.
It all started when Mrs Vines, aged 64, of Bridle Road, Wollaston, who used to own Wallflowers interior design business in Blakedown, near Kidderminster, took her mother back to the former Woodman Hotel, now called the French Hen, in Bromsgrove Road, Clent.
"As we walked across the car park she said 'this is where I saw David for the last time'," said Mrs Vines, the author of Pamela's War, the moving account of her mother's wartime experiences.
"David was an older boy, aged about 24, who she had fallen for at 17 after a kiss on the car park and he fell in love with her.
"But he was a pilot and was killed in a Spitfire accident. She wasn't allowed to mourn – and it was the same for everyone.
"I thought I must write all this down and got a dictating machine and started talking to my mother about her life. I suddenly realised I'd got a book."
At the time war broke out "aliens" such as Italians and Germans were being imprisoned and Pamela's father recognised the accent of a man who had come to the bar.
Mr Wheeler, previously a butcher in Birmingham, decided to send his daughter on a spying mission, following a group of German customers to the house where they were living on the pretext of buying vegetables for the hotel.
Mr Wheeler then reported them to police and they were all arrested.
Later in the war, the business failed and Pamela, a former Stourbridge Girls High School pupil, and her parents moved to a mansion flat at Five Ways, Edgbaston.
"They couldn't find the key to the air raid shelter because the caretaker was in hospital with incendiary burns – so when there was an air raid my grandfather told everyone to lie on the floor at the bottom of the flats," said Mrs Vines, whose book is now on sale at Waterstones branches as well as on the internet.
"The air raid shelter took a direct hit but all the residents survived, although the flats were damaged."
After their home was destroyed by German bombs, the family stayed with friends in Quinton and Hagley and Pamela had to work at a factory at Edgbaston.
Later, she worked in the Women's Land Army in Broome, near Hagley.
She met and married John Fellows, who was posted to Canada in the RAF, and gave birth to her first child, Christine, in 1945.
History Press has now published Mrs Vines's book about her mother's war.
