Langer’s Army and Navy Stores was opened at 55 Enville Street in 1953 by Herbert Langer, a former German prisoner of war who decided to return to the Black Country after the war. The shop had distinctive signage featuring a soldier, sailor and airman, as well as large outdoor displays of goods that would take hours for Mr Langer to put up and take down.
Herbert Langer was born in 1925 in Berlin, Germany. He trained as a chef during the 1940s and was conscripted into the German army towards the end of the war. He was shot in the left knee in battle and was captured and imprisoned initially in Texas, USA before being transferred by boat to a POW camp on Bromley Lane, Wordsley. Whilst imprisoned, Herbert became the camp chef and was, like many prisoners, involved in an informal trade in military equipment and clothing.
The Bromley Lane camp was an open camp, occupied first by Italian then German prisoners. Inmates were able to go out and work for one shilling a week. Whilst many of his fellow prisoners worked at local glassworks or brickworks, Herbert took on a job caring for the grounds of Wordsley Rectory. He was later allowed to live in an outbuilding there, in the care of Reverend R. H. Fowler.
At the end of the war, Herbert was repatriated to Germany but he missed the Black Country so much that he returned after two years. He became a naturalised British citizen in 1954. In 1949 Mr Langer was deployed to work in Billy Evan’s Hardware Store, Cradley Heath. In 1952, Billy Evans opened another store at 55 Enville Street selling hardware, workwear and haberdashery yet died six months after the shop had opened. Langer purchased the shop in 1953 from Mr Evans’ widow and renamed it Langer’s Army and Navy Stores. He met his wife Annie in the late 1950s, they married in December 1970 and had their son, Steven, in 1971.
