I've just read an amusing anecdote in the current issue of The Blackcountyman. Edith Cotterill was born in Tipton (incidentally, just down the hill from where I started school), during a Zeppelin raid in 1917. After qualifying as a nurse she was working in Margate Hospital when WWII broke out. At some point a minesweeper was attacked and the injured sailors taken to the hospital. Apparently no-one except for Edith could understand their dialect, they all hailed from the Black Country! Goodness knows how the locals would have managed with broad Geordies of Scots.
