大象传媒

This story was submitted by Helen Hughes of the People's War team in Wales on behalf of Pat Willmott, and is added to the site with her permission.

I lived in Splott when I was a little girl鈥nd I remember quite a lot of things. As children your parents tried to make it fun for you. I remember going down into the shelters and one night we woke up my brother and I were on bunks and my mother and father were on the flat of the air raid shelter 鈥nd they woke up and they were floating in water, because the water used to seep up. And they were floating and my brother and I thought it was great fun to see mum and dad floating on their put-you-up beds - or pallias (my father used to call them pallias because he was a north countryman and that was a word they used) and there they were floating on this. But I remember one night it must have been towards the middle of the war鈥ut there was a real convoy down in the main road and they had a smoke screen up which was quite exciting for us kids and we all went to see what was going on and there were dozens and dozens of lorries, convoys with goods, with ammunition and all sorts, they were all going to be loaded up from the docks. But they were American and us kids went up and said 鈥淐an we have any gum chum鈥� you know 鈥� a phrase you remember from the war, and we had chewing gum and chocolate and writing paper which we couldn鈥檛 get hold of. But the war had its fun moments. I remember a very bad night it must have been a dive bombing attack 鈥� we didn鈥檛 have time to get out to the shelter and we were in the pantry under the stairs. My brother and I were particularly scared that night because it was so loud and there were older children next door and they kept knocking the wall 鈥� sending us messages and shouting through the wall to cheer us all up. None of us had got dressed 鈥� it was the middle of the night and when it was all over we went out into the street and everybody was laughing because everyone was in everybody else鈥檚 clothes. You just picked up the nearest thing to you and put it on to keep warm. And there were all sorts of weird and wonderful things鈥 remember that quite clearly, I must have been about eight at the time. And I remember my school burning down.. I loved school, and there was an attack on that and it was burning down and a man was killed there that night.

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