大象传媒

I was 9 at the start of hostilities. Early in the war, when the air raid warning sirens went off during school time, we were told that if we lived within 5 minutes of the school, we were allowed to go home to shelter. My friends and I said that we were within this limit but went down to the Tide fields (estuary mud flats) instead, helping ourselves to carrots from the allotments on our way. We watched a German plane approach (they had a distinctive drone with a pause every few seconds) a bomb descending. Suddenly we were covered in mud when it exploded! We went to the docks which I knew well as my father supplied provisions to the coastal shipping. We saw that a ship had been hit. We were spotted by a friendly policeman and sent home. No one was allowed to leave school when the air raid warning sounded after that.
We had no air raid shelter and I was not evacuated until after the worst raids. There were 13 children in our family. In 1941, three sisters were away nursing and one was in the WRENS. My eldest brother Fred was in the RAF and the two youngest had been evacuated. We lived in a large house 鈥渋n the shadow of the steelworks鈥�. My father was the church organist and the sitting / music room next to my bedroom contained all sorts of instruments including a very large organ against the wall. In March 1941 there were two serious raids. During the night the sirens sounded and my brother, Jim, and I slept on. We were oblivious of the fact that mother and the four other children had gathered in the living room downstairs. Father was out working at a factory making gun turrets for the Defiant aircraft. I woke to the sound of a great explosion above me 鈥� like thunder. The bedclothes were covered in dust and plaster. Jim was still in his bed next to the sitting room wall. I made my way there and as the dust settled I realised I could see into the sitting room and beyond to the steelworks. The organ had shielded him. We started to make our way in the dark along the landing. Just as we passed a window another explosion occurred, forcing us down on the floor. Eventually we got downstairs and found we had all survived.
Help soon arrived, people with helmets and torches led us to the safety of an air-raid shelter. Apparently the Germans were using landmines with parachutes which exploded in the air. We spent one night trying to sleep on the pews in Roath Road Church. It was so uncomfortable we moved elsewhere, which was a good thing as the Church was bombed the very next night. The girls鈥� school was damaged in the first raid. We boys were rather envious, but ours was hit the second night! While boarded up our shop was broken into. I was sent to the Police Station and had to run back behind the policeman on his bicycle. The thief was not hard to catch as he left a trail of butter and tea behind him!
I remember being chosen (as the musical one) to attend a concert in the City Hall. I sat right by the piano as Moiseiwitsch played Rachmaninoff. I had to tell the school about it next day in assembly. By a strange quirk of fate, the composer died that night and the teacher helped me say a bit about him.
Later we were evacuated. One sister and three of us boys went to Abercwmboi near Mountain Ash. Emily was on her own but only in the next street. The church was always important to us and I was in the choir there. I was not well and ended up in Aberdare hospital. My elder brother Fred and sister Dora came to see me there. That was the last time I saw Fred as his plane never returned from a run on 18th August 1943.
Back in Cardiff I continued my education in a community Hall and left at 14. I was offered a job in the Air Ministry with day release to attend Technical College and evening classes. We were planning the return of land used as aerodromes. When war ended I met my friends (mainly from the Co-op Youth Club) in the town and we conga鈥檇 up and down the City Hall steps. My diary, displayed, was lovingly kept by my younger brother, for the rest of his life, unknown to me.

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