大象传媒

An account by the Reverend Dennis Barratt
as an evacuee to Llansadwrn 1944 鈥� 1945
(Abridged from a fuller account of 16pp A5 now lodged at the Imperial War Museum, London)

I was first evacuated to Bedford just before the outbreak of the Second World War. On 3rd September the air raid siren sounded for the first time as a practice and people were supposed to hurry to the public shelter. In my location the house I was billeted in was in the last road in Bedford, facing across fields to Cardington Airfield (one time home of the R101!). The shelter was a very large trench, which unfortunately having been newly dug had a large amount of water in the bottom. I have to say that Bedford was not a happy experience for me and I was glad to get home, as indeed did a lot of evacuees at the latter stage of the 鈥減hony war鈥�. For I was expected to do all the chores around the house, even though this frequently made me late for school and on many occasions the recipient of the cane! Schooling then was a part-time experience; we evacuees attended in the morning and the locals in the afternoon, with a change-round at set intervals.
So I was home during the Blitz, and along with my schoolfriends was happily occupied in collecting shrapnel (including spent incendiary bombs!). Most of the jagged pieces of metal came in fact from our own Ack Ack shells! When the V1 (鈥淒oodlebugs鈥�) started, we could cope with these, as on the way to school if you heard their unique engine note you merely looked up to locate it; if its engine cut out you dived for the nearest cover such as a shop doorway; and then on to school. The V2鈥檚 were a different matter as there was of course no warning of them at all. After one landed on Woolworth鈥檚 at New Cross Gate (South-East London), and also on a school, we school-children were evacuated once again. I do remember that some of my friends lost a parent or sibling in these attacks.
I was 12 years old by this time; even so after the excitement of a journey by train had worn off, I found the journey very long, as we were not told where we were going. Eventually, I found myself in Llansadwrn, and the evacuee co-ordinator, a Mrs Dineen, billeted me with the village postmaster, Fred Aubrey. Quite what the authorities these days would make of this arrangement of a 12-year-old billeted with a bachelor I鈥檓 not sure! However, Fred had what we would now call a housekeeper, but was then known as a maid. A bit incongruous as she was of a certain age and not maid-like at all! This domestic arrangement actually meant that I lived the life of Reilly 鈥� so different from my first experience of evacuation to Bedford. The Post Office was also a general store and occupied a fairly large building called Cambrian House. It was right next to the village school, so this meant I got myself up in the morning, came down to a cooked breakfast, then next door to school until lunchtime when a lunch awaited me. After school I was totally free to meet up with my new found (Welsh) friends. The only other evacuees actually in the village (the others were scattered over the outlying farms) were a very young brother and sister at London House, and a Mrs Williams and her two daughters. This family lived in a house opposite the Church (The Gwalia). As Mrs Jones and her four children also occupied the Gwalia, it must have been a bit tight accommodation-wise. So it is a tribute to the family that they made their evacuees so welcome and happy.
My 鈥渇riends鈥� taught me some words of Welsh right from the first night (nosda, borroda, etc.) I was very trusting, for they improved on this a little later, and they tell me I added considerably to the vocabulary of the curate on one occasion! We spent a lot of our time on a nearby farm (Llwyntywyll) where we were allowed to milk the cows, etc. Quite an experience for a townie who was used to bottles of milk appearing on the doorstep! Haymaking around the farms was quite an experience, great wads of bread and cheese and cider!
Of course, there were no mains utilities of any sort in the village then. We had the usual little hut down the garden, oil lamps for lighting, and one of my chores around the house was to go to the village pump situated in the schoolyard for water. There were in fact two shops in the village, the Post Office/store and Mrs. Morgan鈥檚, where we got our sweets when available. Mr. Morgan was a tailor, a tailor of the old school, for he sat cross-legged on his bench. He got us to 鈥渨ax鈥� the thread which made it unbreakable; in fact you could get a nasty cut if you tried to snap it. So I learned something new; my time in Llansadwrn was a complete educational experience of life in a self-sustaining village community. Speaking of education, the school was divided into three large rooms with folding partitions. We evacuees had one of the rooms and we had our own teacher (Miss Jennings), and we were of all age groups in the one class.
The village smithy was very good to us too. It was he who hobnailed our boots, and if he was feeling in the mood would make us an iron hoop to go charging round the village with as if it were a motorbike. For this he 鈥渁llowed鈥� us to work his bellows for the forge when shoeing horses or making the iron bands fitted to farm cart wheels. It was quite exhausting and hot work, but his work was very interesting again to a townie.
Mrs. Dineen I spoke of earlier I found out later wrote a diary of her five years wartime experience. This diary is housed in the Imperial War Museum in London. Extracts from it were used in the fine book (Britain at War in Colour) that accompanied the ITV documentary 鈥淏ritain at War鈥�. Having been to the War Museum (it鈥檚 right opposite where I work in Archbishop鈥檚 House) and read the Diaries, this prompted me to put pen to paper and write up my evacuation experiences in Bedford and Llansadwrn. This monograph, too, is lodged in the War Museum Archives; and is a much more extensive account of my time in Llansadwrn.
I cannot end any retelling of my time in Llansadwrn without expressing my thanks to the people of Wales, and Llansadwrn in particular, for their so very kind generosity and taking us evacuees in and making us so welcome. In my particular case, they more than made up for the unhappy Bedford experience by their warmth and friendship. I still feel that I 鈥渂elong鈥� to Llansadwrn.

Diolch y fawr.

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