大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CVS/大象传媒 on behalf of Ellen Rose Mary Davies and has been added to the site with her permission. Ellen Davies fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was living in Cardiff with my grandmother and remember one night when the Germans really started bombing the city. I was 8 1/2 years old and was put under the kitchen table with the dog and the cat and a book of Bible stories to read. I remember just looking at the pictures and feeling really frightened. Nobody wanted to go outside to the air raid shelter. There was continual bangs and noise until around 10.30 pm, when there was a lull. My aunt said we should all have a cup of tea and we relaxed, thinking it was over for the time being. But as we were to find out, the Germans started a second wave of bombing about half an hour later. This time my grandmother and I were put under the cupboard under the stairs. There was a terrific crash and the whole kitchen window, frame and all, fell in over a couch and the table I'd been sheltering under earlier. This, we learned, was due to landmines landing in the Arms Park Rugby ground which was just accross the river from us. By this time we realised we had to get into the air raid shelter. There was another brief lull from the bombing and we just all dashed out there. It wasn't until 3.00 am when the bombing seemed to ease off. We lost our dog that night: he vanished after the front door was blown in by the blast and never came back. The cat disappeared too that night, but turned up again a couple of days later. All the other streets around us were damaged by the bombing.

After a few hours' sleep in the morning, I was evacuated with my grandmother, my father driving us in his car, to relatives living in the Rhymney Valley. I didn't go back to Cardiff until all the bombing was over. Life was never quite the same afterwards.

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