´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Ian Douglass and has been added to the website on behalf of Grant Dawson with his permission and he fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

During the War, I lived and went to school in Lampeter near Cardigan Bay. West Wales was a long way from the action but I do remember hearing the drone of the German Bombers on their way to bomb Belfast and Liverpool; you heard a sort of pulsating sound. One night the sky became bright red and this was the glow of Swansea burning after a bomber raid.

There were many types of food which were not available but I particularly remember sweets being rationed and that we couldn’t get any bananas.

I was 12 in 1942 and most of our teachers had gone off to the war and so we were taught mainly by retired teachers, who seemed much nicer and kinder than the younger ones! One elderly teacher taught us English and we called him ’Peg Leg’ because he had lost a leg in the First World War. When he walked along corridor, he sounded like Long John Silver! There were a few evacuated children in the town but they never seemed to stay very long. I think they were probably very homesick.

Every so often we would be asked to take part in exercises when we had to pretend to be bombed so that the Fire, Police and Ambulance people could practice what to do in an emergency. We would be bandaged up and labelled ’lost leg’, ‘cut head’ etc. A man would then blow a whistle and we had to give back all the bandages!

There were very few cars around because petrol was not available. I used to go off cycling with my friends, the roads being almost empty of traffic. We would take sandwiches and orange squash and stay in Youth Hostels. We would cycle all over Mid Wales and play in streams and rivers. I don’t remember ever being stopped at any check points but there were plenty of ‘Pill Boxes‘ locally!

There were gold mines in the area which had first been developed by the Romans. The Government thought they would try to extract some of the gold to help pay for the war. I remember the Chief Engineer of the mines, a Chinese man called Mr. Wu, used to visit our house. He would stay for meals and would perform conjuring tricks while we were eating!

Later in the War many American soldiers came to the area and every Sunday two of them came for lunch. They brought gifts of nylon stockings and sweets. They came in their best uniforms and were always very friendly and polite. Many of the girls in Lampeter later went to America to marry . One day the soldiers all vanished and a few weeks later we learned that they had landed in France. One of the two was killed in a battle.

For birthdays we got just a few presents, usually books. We could only ask two or three friends to the party. There was no such thing as a family holiday. There were films once a week at the Memorial Hall; there would be a Newsreel, an ‘A’ film and a ‘B’ film. We also had a film once week at school. We had one radio in the house and this was in my father’s study. We had a map, published by the Daily Telegraph, on the wall and we would follow the progress of the war by sticking pins in the map to show the position of the Allied and German forces.

When, occasionally, people came home on leave from the War, the town would hold a concert in their honour in the Memorial Hall. There would be music, singing and speeches.

Following the surrender of the Italian forces all the farms in the area were sent Italian prisoners to do farm work. I think the prisoners quite enjoyed working on the farms and none of them attempted to escape.

For me the War was quite a nice time. We had a lot of freedom to come and go as we pleased. The worst thing was having to dig in fields to plant vegetables for the school.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.