大象传媒

I was born in a village called Cilfynydd on April 9th 19 35. I lived with my mother,father, and sister who was 6 1/2 years older than than me. My auntie,uncle, and cousin,also lived with us,in those days it was the norm to rent the front room to another family,called apartments. However we all lived as one big happy family. I dont remember the day war was declared,but as time went by I became aware of changes taking place at home.
I can remember people putting white strips on their windows,and a new word entered my life,Blackout. It was drummed into us that in the night we must never show a light, if we did we were told the Germans would drop bombs on us. To make sure ARP men would walk around the streets and back lanes in the village checking. On one occasion my uncle was in the bedroom with a candle, just as he was drawing the curtains there was a big bang on the back door. My father opened the door, and there was the ARP warden shouting "turn that light out".I am glad to say that was the families only brush with the law.
Our food changed with lots of things on ration,a new word for me. I cant remember not likeing any of the things we eat,I can still remember the bliss of eating dried egg. We had an allotment where my father and uncle grew lots of vegitables. we all went to help, my job was weeding, and picking the fruit when ripe. My cousin Maldwyn job was collecting manure, not a pleasant job, but a little treatwas usually sufficient to get the job done. We ate lots of rabbits ,cooked in all different ways, my favourite was rabbit stew with dumplings,yum,yum.
My father made a shelter under the stairs with with bunk beds,we all squeezed if the air raid sirens sounded, it was all very exciting stuff and i cant ever remember being scared it was a big adventure. The only German plane i ever saw was on a visit to my aunties in Talbot Green. We were picking blackberries on the mountain one afternoon,when we saw this areoplane flying very low coming towards us,we all started waving. Suddenly,my mother screamed and pushed me to the ground, i looked up and saw crosses under the wings of the plane, it banked and flew off towards the sea. We scrambled down the mountain as fast as we could, needless to say we didnt have blackberry tart for tea.
My uncle Wyndham was in the Home Guards,they all marched with sticks on their shoulders instead of guns, and practised on Cilfynydd Common hiding in the ferns to avoid being captured by the "enemy".
I can also remember the American soldiers coming to Cilfynydd they were billited in lots of houses, we children would shout "any gum chum", more often than not they would throw us a few packets. My favourite American was named Donald, he was staying in a house at the bottom of the street, and every time he passed he would throw me a few packets.They were there for quite a while,then suddenly they were gone,they went overnight we didnt know where. A few weeks later we heard about D Day, and a few months later my mother told me Donald had been killed on the D Day landings.It was a sad day for me,and i have never forgotten him, Iam 70 years old now but i can still remember his lovely smile.

One of my favourite memories is sitting around the radio listening to "Lord Haw Haw". My mother, father,auntie, and uncle would call him names, even we were allowed to join in, something rare as i was brought up to believe children were seen and not heard. All the children had a favourite song we used to sing at the top of our voices it went something like this.

Hitler he only had one b--l
Goring had two but very small
Himmler had something similar
But Dr Gobbels had no b--ls at all
We sang this to the tune of Colonal Boogie.

Ration books were the bain of my mothers life she was always scared she would lose them. They were an important part of our lives, without them there were lots of essential things we could'nt buy, such as butter, sugar,tea,cheese, eggs,and meat and some kinds of fruit. Many times i ran home from school shouting "oranges and apples in Jonathon's " then run back up the shop with the ration book clutched in my hand. The apples were Canadian, sweet, red, and juicy, well worth the long wait to be served. I cant remember ever eating a banana. Some sausages were off the ration, made from scraps meat lots of bread salt and pepper, not very nice but if they were on your plate you eat them.

We had one bomb dropped on Cilfynydd it missed the houses and dropped on the common in front of the tips. I remember my dad telling me the plane had followed the Cardiff to Merthyr train up the valley and dropped the bomb,lucky for the train and us it missed.

There was lots of excitement the day the evacuees came. We all went up the school to see them arriving. I was disappointed to find we didn't have one. My mother told me to be patient but I wasn't very happy. However, a few months later I found out we were to have one. Our next door neighbours moved to Birmingham just before the war started and they then wrote to us to ask my parents if their daughter Connie could come to stay with us. She was the same as myself so I was thrilled. Sad to say, on reflection, I don't think I was verynice to her in the beginning. After a few smacks and handing over my favourite doll to her (orders of my mother) we started to be good friends and shespent 3 1/2 very happy years with us. When the time came for her to go home, she begged to be allowed to stay with us.
I was made aware of the terrible reality of war when i was about 10 years old, we were on holidays in Exmouth, one of the treats was a visit to the cinima. We all sat down , then my mam told us "you are going to see something very bad now, but i want you to watch it and never forget what you have seen. It was the newsreel of our troops liberating Belson it was hard for me to believe that people could be so evil and cruel to treat those poor people in that way.I have never forgotten that newsreel and never will,but sad to say it seems a lot of people have.

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