To
see full contents, go to SITE
MAP.
HOME
GUARD MEMORIES AND
INFORMATION - WARWICKSHIRE
"EXERCISE TRINITY"
BIRMINGHAM FIRE GUARDS EXERCISE
SATURDAY 20TH MAY 1944
|
Birmingham
was the scene of many defensive exercises in the
course of the war. Sometimes these were major
military exercises involving attack and defence
by huge numbers of regular troops and Home
Guards; others were to test the readiness of the
city's various specialised services to meet
other challenges, especially that of air raids.
"Exercise Trinity" was an example of the latter,
perhaps one of the last to be conducted. It was
an exercise aimed at the
Fire Service,
the Fire Guard
Service, the
Civil Defence General Services and the
Home Guard -
in other words, the entire range of services
which would be brought to bear in the event of
an aerial attack.
Local units of the Birmingham Home Guard were
thus involved and it seems that one very
specific role was to provide wounded personnel
for rescue and medical care. It is not known
which of the various Birmingham Home Guard
battalions participated.
The timing
exercise is probably significant: just over a
fortnight before D-Day (widely anticipated but
involving wholly unknown reactions on the part
of the Germans); and not long before the arrival
in the south-east of the first V1 and V2 rockets
(wholly unexpected by the general public but
presumably anticipated by the Government; who
could know what the targets were going to be?) The
exercise may well have been a precaution against
both of these possibilities. History tells us
that Birmingham was spared the onslaught for
which it had prepared itself so thoroughly.
This page shows one or two
surviving documents specifying a little of the detail of the
exercise. They are certainly just the tip of a huge
iceberg: many, many hundreds, if not thousands of
men and women must have been involved - all of those
who would have had duties to perform in the event of
an air-raid including fire service personnel, ambulance crews,
first-aiders, rescue teams, hospital personnel, fire wardens, police,
ARP wardens, Home Guard men,
G.P.O. engineers,
W.V.S.
women, messengers, personnel from the City utility
departments such as water, gas and electricity. They would all
have required instructions as to their role in the
exercise. And now
that vast mound of paperwork has disappeared as has
all first-hand memory of a Saturday night where everyone
strove to hone their skills and keep their City
safe against a still unknown future.
