大象传媒

I was born in 1931 so was 8 when the war started and 14 when it finished, and I remember it very clearly. I lived in Cardiff with my parents and 2 older brothers, and we were quite heavily bombed. We children used to run out to see which houses had gone down and also if there were any arms or legs to be seen but there never were. Very gruesome of us!

I've been looking at the Anderson shelter in the 大象传媒's war garden at the Hampton Court Flower Show and I realise how little protection those shelters really gave us. We had a double ...... in the front. Sometimes we had lodgers as we had to accommodate people and for some time we had a young Catholic married couple who were terrified in the bombing. We were young, callous children and when they would be praying and saying the Rosary out loud during the raids, we would be laughing at their fear. We envied my older brother who would go out with my father with his ARP metal hat on while we had to stay in. We didn't sleep in the shelter always, just if it was going to be a bombing night. We were't afraid. Children had a strange bravado - we knew people had died and would die,but I suppose we thought it wouldn't ever be us.

Then the Germans started to drop the incendiary bombs and the ARP people had to be very alert. I know my father had to climb into the lofts and put them out. I remember he made a hole in our bathroom ceiling so that if one ever fell in our loft, he could quickly get up there to put it out - there was no other way of getting into the loft. We were lucky as none ever fell into our house, but my father had to go and put one out in my aunt's house. The incendiary would come through the tiles into the attic and set fire to it, and sand, not water, would have to be used to put it out. They dropped multiple incendiaries but they were better than the big bombs which would take one or more houses out. One night my primary school was hit and all the top of it went, so we had to move to another school. We only had a few classes and also we often had to go into the shelters, so our schooling was quite disrupted.

Later on we were evacuated up into the Welsh Valley and it was the most horrendous experience of my life. My older brother was able to stay at home because he was just going to High School so I was with my younger brother, and I was terrified we would be separated. We were all put in a church hall and people had to come and pick us. I clung to my broither and we weren't picked, and then we had to go to an elderly couple. My poor brother wanted to go with a group of boys who went to the next house with a woman who took 4 of them, but I couldn't bear for him to leave me alone so we stayed together. Howeveer the elderly couple didn't want us and it was horrid, horrid, horrid! My parents came up every weekend to see us although it was very expensive for them. One weekend, my older brother and my father cycled up but it took them so long to come up all those hills that they were really late in arriving and we were in despair! They eventually arrived at 3 and had to leave half an hour later - we were heart-broken. We were there for 3 months and then we finally persuaded our parents to take us home. We said we wanted to be all together and if we had to die, we wanted to die with them.

I remember the end of the war. It wasn't like it was in London, but we did have a street party for VE Day.

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