大象传媒

I was born on the 13 July 1941 in St Woolos Hospital in Newport. It became a family joke that my Father who was trying to take a present in to my Mother could only buy fish and chips, which helped because of the very poor hospital food. Of more concern was that when the air raid siren went all the babies were taken down to the shelter but the mothers were left exposed in their hospital beds although some used to creep under the beds for shelter.

We lived at that time in rooms in Argyle Street in Newport with a small Anderson shelter in the front room. My first real memory of this was being carried into this shelter, with the air raid sirens going off. The main memory was of the throbbing of aircraft engines and a whistling sound. I distinctly remember my Mother throwing herself across both my sister and myself but there was no explosion. The bomb had fallen into the mud bank of the River Usk some 75 yards away but it did not explode. It may still be there today. I was about 2.5 years old when this happened.

We moved then to Annesley Road the other side of the river and I went to nursery school. I distinctly remember being taken to the local park (which we called the "Rec") every day and we always wanted to see the Barrage balloons which were moored there. We had a book called "Billy the Barrage Balloon" which was read to us in the nursery class. We always asked the men stationed there if Billy had been a good boy and they always assured us that he had.

The one thing which frightened me for many years were the search lights shining into the sky at night and the wailing of the sirens. Even now I always feel anxious if I hear a similar noise.

I distinctly remember my sister and myself being told to take a clean jam jar to school at the end of the war. This was because the American forces donated cocoa powder to all the children in the primary schools. This caused great excitement as sweets were still on ration and difficult to get. However little if any actually arrived home as we kept sticking our fingers into the powder so we were covered in chocolate powder all over our faces, hands and clothes.

On VE day there was a street party with tables and chairs coming out from the houses and lots of bread and jam sandwiches to eat. We then had egg and spoon and sack races and as the evening drew in it had started to rain. A bonfire had been built at the cross roads of our street but there was great difficulty in lighting it as the material was wet. My father who was a toolmaker for the local Ordinance factory was in a reserved occupation, but under the guise of being in the Home Guard he was a member of the local resistance unit called the Jonah patrol. As a result of this secret he had been issued with a rifle and incendiary bombs (unknown to most of the authorities). He decided that one of these devices would make the bonfire burn, which it did but also melted the tarmac on the road which ran down the gutter. My sister and me watched in fascination from our bedroom window as the fire brigade arrived to put out the blazing tar. Unfortunately water seemed to make this worse as it was a phosphorus device.

My Father had never let us children go down into the cellar as these devices were stored in buckets of sand. As he had been sworn to secrecy about the bombs they were finally disposed of by throwing into the mouth of the River Usk on an out going tide.

We were always told that my father's absences from home were due to his Home guard duties and my Mother never knew (before she died in 1984) of my Father's involvement in the resistence units.

The Jonah patrol was mainly recruited from members of the Rover Scout troops based in Newport and it this was done only on personal recommendations.

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