大象传媒

On January 14th. 1941 there was an air raid similar to the one the previous September. My mother and I were at the Maxime cinema, Sketty, watching, appropriately enough, a battle scene from North West Passage when the crump of the anti-aircraft guns at nearby Singleton blotted out the ancient firearms in the film. We saw the programme through before going to the nearby air raid shelter.
It was bitterly cold; it had been snowing all day and was rather icy underfoot, so at last we decided to make a run for it. Twice we dived into the nearest house, once we sheltered in an A.R.P. post and on our way up the Steps, searchlights overhead, the sound of falling bombs in the distance and the rapid approach of a plane made us dive behind the nearest protecting bank, amidst all the thorny winter brambles.
We were worried about fifteen-year-old Daphne and were glad to find she had taken shelter with one of our next door neighbours in Pantycelyn Road.
The "All Clear" sounded about 4 a.m. on Saturday the 18th. Incidentally the works hooter at Weavers (where I worked) was one of those used to signal both the "Alert" and "All Clear" during raids. Church bells no longer rang on Sundays. They were to be used only in the event of an actual invasion.
Radio news reported that Swansea had had a "blitz" -the only town attacked that night. Two shops, Eddershaws and Dan Morgan's, were demolished and Dillwyn Street badly hit again. Our old school (St. Winifreds Convent) which had had windows shattered in the previous attack, had it's laboratory blown to bits by a bomb which fell on the end house of Hanover Street. Casualties were estimated at seventy, killed.
Two office colleagues were bombed out, including one from Chaddersley Terrace, where there was a thirty foot crater. Nearby a shelter, still clamped together was twisted in the earth as if by a giant hand.
On February 19th Mum was at the Carlton Cinema, where Dad was manager, and Daphne and I were at home when another "blitz" started. We spent the hours between 7-40 p.m. and 12-15 a.m. dodging between the living room fire, where it was warm and cosy, and the pantry under the stairs (a rumour was abroard throughout the war that the stairs would protect one)where we were a little cramped but not very nervous after the first bout of trembles when our knees felt wambly and cold and excitement aggravated the conditions.
There was a number of "whistlers", a lot of incendiary bombs and explosives and a new type of exploding fire bomb.
It snowed heavily, to make matters worse. It seems this outlined the town, making the division between land and sea more apparent.
Thusday night I risked going to the Carlton Cinema and was sitting upstairs, feeling rather nervous, when the second raid started. Shortly after the warning the guns started firing and Dad made me go downstairs under the balcony. Things got hot after a bit so the film was stopped (the operator's
"protection" was a single glass roof.)This annoyed one man who wanted to know "Why the bloody hell isn't the show going on?" and was told off in no uncertain manner by the manager. "It seems so easy to tell other people exactly how to do their own work" was my home-spun philosophy.
There were one or two lulls of half an hour during which the show was completed, then back to Dad's office until 12.35 and the all clear.
When we reached home we found mum and Daphne all right but very shaken. there had been a very bad fire about 300 yards away at Teilo Crescent which gutted several houses and killed many people. A real tragedy, especially as explosives were dropped on the blazind ruins. Later the general opinion was that Swansea Docks was the real target. (Throughout the war many such attempts on the docks were made without success.)
The worst raid of all, though, occurred on the Friday. I stopped in to dinner and a crowd of us went round trying to find some place with food, but nothing doing! Eventually we bought some seasoned pressed meat, like faggots, bread rolls and pastries from "The Dorothy" and took them back to the office. I had promised to meet my mother at the bus stop; temporarily at the the bottom of the hill, instead of the debris-filled Dynevor Place. To get there we had to make a detour round Castle Street to High Street because of notices, "Danger. Unexploded Bomb. Keep Away."
That afternoon it exploded, shaking the the office badly and killing five men, four engineers from a bomb disposal squad and a policeman.
Mum had taken a bus home just before i arrived. Everyone was feeling the strain of the previous couple of nights, short of sleep and suffering from nervous reaction.
"They seem to have altered people's faces" I thought. Most of the eyes have the same expression, men, women and children, a sort of cautious dis- illusionment." I seem to have got rid of some of my tension by "a jolly good cry."
As soon as the sirens blew on Friday 21st February Mum and I, who had been getting ready to go down to the Carlton to Dad, joined Mr. and Mrs. Thomas, our next door neighbours instead and went into their shelter. Afterwards, when it was all over, we were profoundly thankful that Daphne and Pam Thomas had been sent out of it that afternoon to Auntie Gert in Rhymney.
We "sheltered" for about two hours, listening to the bombs falling like a horrible rain all over the town. I remember thinking for the first time of death and, selfishly and with amazement,"These things could kill me."
We could hear the hiss of flares and occasionally Mr. Thomas removed the shelter door so as to see that no incendiaries had burnt up the place. These nasty exploding fire bombs could be heard cracking the roadway like gigantic hailstones. About five fell in our immediate vicinity and we tackled one of those that started flaring up at the back door by trying to throw bags of earth from the protective bank round the shelter on top of the spluttering demon. Unfortunately the bags were too heavy and the material had rotted (they weren't actually intended for smothering bombs) so that the earth spilt down my coat and over my gloves. I didn't mind that, of course, felt much better when I was up and doing. It was far less nerve-wracking than sitting and waiting.
Meanwhile the end of Pantycelyn started blazing and lit up the place like day. "Come on" said Mr. T. "we must get out of this, we are too much of a target now." So we decamped to Ty-Coch where some extra-ordinarily kind people called us in to their steel and concrete shelter. We stayed there, comfortable amd warm, until the all clear, then went home, our way lit by the fires from the town.
I never forgot that walk out or the trek back. We had to make a detour round the road because of a time bomb near the Steps, and the nearer we got the fiercer became the light from the town and the surrounding areas.
Mum was in a panic lest the Carlton had been flattened and kept repeating, "Your father's gone, I know it" but just behind the Plaza cinema, which was clearly seen ringed by fires, there was a small black space. "The Glamour House is probably safe in that small spot" I said.
We passed the Baker home on the way back and found it absolutely gutted, not a wall left, just a few flames playing over the debris. It had completely burnt out in two hours and nothing could be done to save it because there was no water. For the same reason many buildings in the town were destroyed. Among the first casualties that night were the water mains.
We could see enormous flames leaping from windows and doorways and rooftops, bridging streets and exposing houses and cinemas in the glare, it was terrifying and fascinating.
At four on Saturday morning Mum and I crawled into bed, clothes and all, to fall asleep immediately; we were reallyy exhausted, but we couldn't have felt so bad as the magnificent civil services, soldiers, policemen and civilians who worked all night under awful conditions to help and save people and buildings.
Dad arrived home at eight o'clock and had to return immediately as there was salvaged stock in the cinema lobby from two shops opposite. He had some graphic tales to tell of the way the bacon in the grocer's shop could be smelt "cooking" in the fire and how streams of melted butter and fat ran down the gutters. A good few rations "went west" that evening. Smoking, after dinner, he fell asleep sitting up in his chair, even the cigarette neglected.
I went down with him that morning to see if Weaver's was O.K. and diiscovered there were two time bombs inside which, of course, suspended work. Feeling dog tired and heavy eyed I returned home. I found a man at home who had lost his people and had been told they were at No.27 (our house, he found them afterwards at No.72.) They had been evacuated from Teilo Crescent. Off again on his search he left his meat and vegetables with us; later on he collected the former and gave us the latter, "I don't know why but it was very nice of him."
It was typical of the way people seemed to draw closer together, to become more trusting and more friendly. We were all in the same "boat" to a large extent and it certainly appeared to make everyone less selfish.
The Welsh love to talk anyway, but then they became even more sociable, perfect strangers swapping bomb stories in bus queues and neighbours passing on the news of where some scarcity in the food or clothes area was to be found.

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