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During a concentrated period of bombing and air raids over several cities — Swansea, Cardiff, Barry and Coventry — it was 3 nights in succession. On one of these nights that an unexploded landmine dropped about ½ mile from where I lived — on a big area of allotments.

The AR watchers on duty at the time, including Father, saw this parachute descending and were convinced it was a German pilot bailing out and ran to where they thought he landed to intercept the unfortunate man.

Instead they were very fortunate not to have been blown up. However, at 3 a.m., we were woken up by a Policeman and were told if we didn’t have relatives to go to, we would have to go to the nearest school.

We all walked to Aunty Liza and Uncle Bob, about 2 miles further into the centre of Cardiff. It was January and very cold, but I remember it was a starry night.
There was a strong smell of burning in the air as we were walking — there were incendiary bombs in the gutters where they were dying out.

When we got to Aunty Liza’s house, she gave us some sherry and put us into a lovely big feather bed. We slept well. However, Grandmother, who was bedridden had to be left behind in the house — also an Invalid who lived opposite was left behind. Mother returned day after day for Nan (for 3 days) with food.

When the bomb disposal people eventually defused 2/3 of the landmine, but for some unknown reason had to explode the last 1/3. When this was all arranged, Grandmother and the Invalid were put into an ambulance and driven ¼ mile down the road and then the bomb exploded. A lot of local houses were damaged — roofs blown off, and windows broken. Our house had a broken window and a big crack in the ceiling.

We had an air raid shelter in the garden, but hardly used it as it was usually full of water. We grew lovely strawberries on the roof - ‘golden sovereign’ was the variety.

May (my sister) and I slept under the stairs for quite a while as they reckoned it was the safest place.

Another time, May and I were sheltering under the table when we heard a bomb explode. We thought it was aimed at the ordinance factory about a mile from our house. The bomb exploded directly over some houses on Pumerw Road.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Sarah Evans of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Shropshire CSV Action Desk on behalf of Jean McEwan and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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