大象传媒

I was only a small child during world war, and the small village where I lived was not exactly a target for bombing appart from the possibility of some stray bombs meant for Valley on Angelsey and Liverpool. My Family had a Guest House and before the War we catered for Tourists, mainly Climbers in Snowdonia.Because of this we had plenty of room for Evacuees to stay with us.

My father would have been approaching 40 years of age but he did not go into the sevices as he was born with club feet. He instead worked in a factory in Llanberis making Aircraft parts. Towards the end of the War he went to work for the Civil Service in the food Office in Llanrwst dealing with people's ration books. This went on until the mid fifties, the number of things on ration reducing all the time. By the early fifties I and my friends were in Grammar School in Llanrwst and we where allowed to keep our page of Sweet rations which allowed us 2 ounzes of sweets a week. We used to plague my father, pretending that we had lost our coupons but we could never fool him!

We had three or four families living with us throughout the war, one in particular Mr and Mrs Cheatham and their son Tony and Mrs Cheatam's parent's Mr & Mrs Taylor stayed with us for three and a half years. They had been bombed out of their house in Walasey on the Wirrel. Both families kept in touch with each other for many years afterwards

Our Village school had about 50 pupils up the the time of War but during the war the Number doubled as a bombed out school from Liverpool,incuding their teachers, joined us. Us Village children thought these Children very strange, we could not understand what they where saying, but on reflexion they must have found us even stranger, we even spoke a strange foreign language! I remember one child in particular because he was black and I don't think we had ever seen a black child before. Both schools kept in touch and we were all very sad to learn that the little black boy had died from drawning shortly afterwards. This left a lasting impression on me.

The Royal Hotel in the village was taken over by the forces which seemed to keep all the young girls in the village happy, allthough I was much too young.

The second half of the war convoys of American Soldiers used passed through the Village. We children would run to the School railings where they would would shower us with chewinggum. Older girls where bribbed with Nylon Stockings!

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