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this story is submitted by Helen Hughes of the People's War team in Wales on behalf of Lorna Colley and is added to the site with her permission.

I lived in Coburn Street in the Cathays area of Cardiff, and was four when the war started. Sometimes we’d be walking up to school and there’d been a bomb dropped in a particular road and one of the roads I remember particularly was Herbert Street in Maindee…because my grandfather lived in Herbert Street. And we went up to school this particular morning and we were told, no school today children, because people have been evacuated and it was in fact Herbert Street and my grandfather was in school rather than me! I remember that happening a couple of times. ..and it was a lovely day off for the kids!.

We children collected shrapnel….obviously the boys were more for doing that than we girls. Obviously if we did find a bit then the boys would try to nab it off us…you know…it was their trophies, not ours. My father worked for the American Red Cross during the war and they were stationed here in the Central Hotel and I used to do very well for American comics and chocolate and toothpaste….I would go down with my father sometimes and I got into the terrible habit — Americans are very fond of sugar, they put sugar on a lot of their food — and it’s a terrible habit that I acquired. I’m afraid I still put sugar on salad, and tomato sauce and things like that — horrid really.

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