大象传媒

Coming Home during an Air Raid

My mother鈥檚 memories of the war are of years of constant worry interspersed with periods of fear. She worried about her father, a Captain in the Merchant Navy, who was part of the Atlantic convoys. She knew that if his ship were to be struck by a German U-boat he would, as tradition demanded, go down with his ship. Her brother had also been called up to the army and was receiving training before being sent abroad. She was also writing to her best friend鈥檚 brother who had just survived Dunkirk and was now in the Middle East. It was to be a fruitful correspondence as he became her husband at the end of the war and hence my father.

She lived in Port Tennant, a working class district near the docks in Swansea, South Wales. In addition to members of her close family she had an innumerable number of cousins and most of who were also serving in the forces. She worked in a coal distributing office in the centre of Swansea and would come home every day to find that her mother was filled with worry about the latest rumour she had heard whilst shopping that morning. These varied from: the water had been poisoned by Fifth Columnists, the Germans had landed on the beach and Churchill had left the country on the Queen Mary bound for America. Whilst Churchill was regarded a good wartime leader he was generally not trusted. In South Wales he was remembered for ordering troops to fire on unarmed miners in Tonypany and Llanelli who were striking for better pay and conditions. In addition, the traditional Tory supporters; the shopkeepers and farmers seemed to be making a good profit from the war particularly through the black market. Many people also felt that when Swansea suffered bombing raids the Fire Service attended businesses in the centre of town before areas of terraced housing such as Port Tennant.

As Port Tennant was near the docks it was in the frontline when Swansea was bombed. They were friendly with a grocer and his family who lived across the road. Since the shop had a cellar my mother and grandmother would shelter in the cellar together with other neighbours. As she sat there hearing the sounds of explosions outside my mother pondered something her mother had told her earlier in the day.
The grocer鈥檚 family was called Smith but the family came originally from Germany and were called Schmidt. Anti-German feeling during WW1 had caused the family had changed their name to Smith. My mother kept asking herself the same question time and time again. Why are one group of Germans trying to kill me and another group of Germans trying to save my life?

She never found an answer to that question.

During one of Swansea鈥檚 bombing raids her father鈥榮 ship had docked at Barry, a port about 30 miles away having just survived another trip to and from Russia. My grandfather had been away from home for several months and was looking forward to a few days leave with his family. He caught the train to Swansea only for it to stop 6 miles outside the town because an air raid prevented it going any further.

Not someone to be deterred by the trivialities in life, he decided to walk the 6 miles home. As he arrived outside his house he saw, to his horror, that a bomb had fallen in the small back garden and all the windows, doors and anything breakable in the house had been destroyed. Running through the house he called out his wife鈥檚 name but there was no sign of life. He stood outside the house looking up and down the street trying to ignore a terrible thought that kept flashing through his mind.
Had he survived the Atlantic convoys only for his wife and children to be killed in an air raid? The noise of the All-clear came sounding over the town and from across the road he heard a voice calling 鈥淒ad鈥�. From out of the Grocer鈥檚 cellar came his wife and daughter to run into his outstretched arms.

Strangely enough it was a while before anyone commented that the house no longer had windows and doors.

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