大象传媒

I was evacuated in 1939 at the age of 14 to Pontypool in South Wales, it was part of Monmouthshire in those days. I was sent to live with a miners family Mr and Mrs Joshua and their two sons. In the spring of 1941 there were many German bombing raids on Cardiff. This story concerns one morning after a night air raid on Cardiff. The evacuees shared West Monmouth School. The pupils went to school in the morning and the evacuees in the afternoon. We were sure we had heard a bomb dropped somewhere nearby the night before. So we went up in the hills to search around. We discovered that a load of incendiaries had been dropped, probably by a German bomber being chased by one of our night fighters. Due to the soft ground, the bombs had sunk into the earth up to the fins. We decided to collect some of the fins as souvenirs. Just prior to going back to our prospective homes for lunch, before going off to school I decided to take one more fin. To my surprise when I pulled the fin out, the whole bomb came as well, one that had not exploded. That day Mr Joshua and his sons were on a late shift at the mine, so were at home for lunch. Imagine their faces when I walked into the dining room and dropped the bomb on to the sideboard. I can still see the shock on their faces today. Mr Joshua grabbed the bomb rushed outside and put it into a bucket of water and phoned the police. A few days later I was summoned to the police station and given a telling off by the Inspector.

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