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This story has been added to the People’s war website by Jenny Burnett on behalf of David Pugsley. David has given his permission and is aware of the site’s terms and conditions.

We were living in Cardiff during the war. We had an Anderson shelter in the garden and Grandmother had one next door, with entry by a trap door. I had an adult’s gas mask - I wanted a Mickey Mouse one but was told I was too old.

My Father worked in the docks before the war. He was a charge-hand electrician. He wanted to be a submariner but wasn’t allowed to because of doing essential war work. The boffins came from London and went onto the merchant ship my father was working on. They were asked to lay a steel cable around the ship, but didn’t know why. The ship sailed into the mined areas off Norway and came back safely. Later, Churchill and others from the Admiralty came to the dockyard. It was only long after the war that I found out he had helped to develop something called ‘de-gaussing’ - the cable repelled mines. He had been sworn to secrecy.

Mother and I were evacuated to a quieter valley - Ferndale. I remember seeing a loose barrage balloon and aeroplanes trying to shoot it down before it became tangled in the cables.

One day a Spitfire came up the valley. It hit the mountainside and exploded and fell back into the graveyard. I saw men crawling through the graveyard but they couldn’t get near. The pilot was our milkman’s son who’d recently got his wings. He and the navigator were killed.

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