大象传媒

At the outbreak of war my eldest brother was evacuated to Carmarthen with most other children but I stayed home with my Mam Gram and younger brother we all had gas masks issued to us ,I had one which we called mickeymouse mask. My baby brother had to be put in a sort of sack with a small window and laced end to seal it,then we took turns to use a hand pump for air.My Father was a heavy lifting foreman at LLandarcy oil refinery,and exempt army service because of his work,so he had to travel all over the country on warwork which entails moving oil tanks underground for safety and out of sight of enemy aircraft. We at this time were having numerous raids over Swansea, and the surrounding areas but these were nothing untill the three nights blitz it is hard to try to explain the terror and fear everyone was put through on these nighttime raids,my Dad had come home for a few days and also being in the homeguard had just come off duty.On one of the nights bombing I stood with him holding his hand he with his homeguard helmet on and I with his ARP helmet.Looking from Gwynfor road Townhill towards Penlan which was lit up like fairyland by the incendiary bombs and explosions,it was mostly fields then, and not an estate as it is today thank god,it is an experience I will never forget,after each raid my pals and I would go looking for shrapnel over Townhill and Mayhill. Tielo cresent was compleately distroyed all the houses were just piles of rubble,sometimes we found the fins of incendiary bombs which our mothers used as ornaments,at this time I was at Gorse shcool when there was a daylight raid and we were all herded into the boilerroom under the school halL,I remember on one occasion a teacher was knocked out when he hit his head on a roof girder owing to restricted headroom.During a lull in the bombing my Mam would take me and my younger brother over to ST Thomas to visit relatives,the town was one big bomb site,you could walk from Mount Pleasant to Castle Street picking our way through the rubble,where David Evens now stands the army had erected a bailey bridge for people to gain access to Castle Sreet, from there you could look all the way to the then Plaza cinema in now the Kingsway, every building was damaged or distroyed.One night we were all under our living room table my Gran Mam my younger brother and myself , when we heard bombs coming down they fell in a line from Gwynedd Avenue to Elphin Cresent which was directly over our house ,I will never foreget the screaming noise it was deafening and the explosions shook our house,a block of four houses were compleatly distroyed just a hundred yards down the road how lucky we all were .I went in the morning to look,luckily no one was killed but its chimney pots with there assorted brickwork was still in tact laying on the houses bases with the out- line of the rooms still with there oil cloth in place.Then came the time the American soldiers arrived, they were camped in Singleton Park they would sometimes march past Gorse School while we were having a break in the yard,we used to ask them any candy sandy any gum chum I couldn:t tell you all the replies we got,because they are not printable
At long last we had V E day what a time we all had every one dressed up there were street parties every where with flags flying from every house all the boys and Girls marched all over Townhill with made up drums out of empty tins and combs with paper covering them for instruments,what a time we all had .About this time I went to Weavers Flour mill dock where Sainsburys Supermarket is now with the school to see a captured German U Boat moored there, we all went aboard and was shown arround I can still remember how cramped it was.I hope and pray young children dont ever have to go through this experience I and my generation had too
B T Legg

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