"When the Home Front is mentioned names like London, Plymouth, Coventry and Liverpool spring quickly to mind - but what about Willenhall?

" On the night of the 20-21 November 1940 Willenhall found itself on the Home Front. Not on the scale of the big cities mentioned, but of equal intensity in tragedy, loss, heartache, tales of lucky escapes and courageous deeds.

"Spring Bank was an area of high density working class houses situated next to factories and centred around St Anne's Church and St Chads. The community was one large extended family, each household being related to others in the close vicinity. My grandparents house, No 41 Springvale Street, was warm and all the rooms were pervaded by the delicious smell of the baking of a rich fruit cake. Preparations for my Aunt Gwen's 21st Birthday on the 4th December were going ahead despite rationing. Ray, Gwen's boyfriend, left her at about 11.30pm to return home and she retired to bed. At two minutes to twelve the bomb fell into an adjacent house. A whole gamut of sounds filled the air, the crump of the explosion, the shattering of masonry, screams and cries and the tinkling of a million bells as windows and glass shattered - and then came the silence of shock.

"Bill and Jane Cox, my grandparents, were still in the living room. He called up the stairs Gwen, Bill', and received answers from both. My aunt recalls her father saying "thank God for that'. The four of them were blackened with soot and dirt brought down by the explosion and they looked like miners. Their home was ruined by blast damage, the 21st birthday pierced with glass shards but they themselves without injury. They were the lucky ones. My aunt's cousin, Lily, aged 28, her husband William Noreton James, aged 30, and their children, Frederick, aged four and Mary, aged two, lived next door at number 40. Their mothers, Lily and Jane, were sisters with Lily Tonks occupying number 43. Freddy and Mary spent a lot of time at their grandparents and several times a week, Freddy would spend the night at number 43. He spent the evening of 20 Nov with his grandparents. At about l0pm he changed for bed and, already asleep, he was carried to his family home, number 40.

"The explosion dislodged the chimney of number 41 and sent it crashing into the bedrooms of number 40. The four were killed - a family wiped out. Number 39, Springvale Street, had borne much of the force of the explosion. Thomas Bird, aged 50, his wife, Clara, aged 48, and their son, Ronald, agd nine, lost their lives here. On the corner of Ann Street and Ward Street, stood a redundant pub - formerly known as Skinny Lizzie's - it was now occupied as a house by the Morris family. George Morris, a serving soldier, was on leave. Earlier in the year he had fought in the rearguard of action which resulted in the Dunkirk evacuation. It was here the next bomb struck George Morris, aged 22, his brother Owen, aged 13, and Geoffrey, aged 11 as its victims. At the funeral the wreath for George was in the form of a Staffordshire knot.

"Further along Ward Street, a blast claimed yet another victim. It is believed Joyce Fox, aged 19, was blown from the top to the bottom of the stairs. The rear of the houses, in St Anne's Terrace, came out in Ward Street. The fronts overlooked the church and school across a narrow alley. Diagonally opposite the corner occupied by the Morris family at the other end of Ward Street, was number 12, St Anne's Terrace, the home of Joseph Lockley, agd 24, a well known bandleader. He died buried beneath debris when the next bomb, in a stick of six, fell. It took rescuers four attempts to find him. Twelve people dead, three houses demolished, St Annes Church and School, and eighty houses damaged was the outcome of Willenhall's unwanted appearance on the Home Front.

The Wolverhampton-built Boulton Paul Defiant saw action in the desperate 1940 Battle of Britain. With a top speed of only 300mph, the Defiant was never in the same class as the legendary Spitfire and Hurricane and was no match for the German fighters. But in the hands of an expert pilot and gunner, it packed a formidable punch from its unique power-operated turret carrying four machine guns.

Hero keeps medal secret: A young airman from Lower Gornal, who dropped the first British bomb on Germany in the war, was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal in November.

But 21-year-old Sergeant John Smith wouldn't even tell his parents what the award was for, simply saying it was "for doing my job."

After the well kept secret was eventually revealed, the airman's proud mother said that even as a pupil at Wolverhampton Grammar School her son would never tell anyone of his record-breaking achievements in school races.

She said she had to wait for the Express & Star to come out with the results.

The Wolverhampton-built Boulton Paul Defiant saw action in the desperate 1940 Battle of Britain. With a top speed of only 300mph, the Defiant was never in the same class as the legendary Spitfire and Hurricane and was no match for the latest German fighters. But in the hands of an expert pilot and gunner, it packed a formidable punch from its unique power-operated turret carrying four machine guns.