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This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Ivor Phillips and has been added to the site with his permission. Ivor Phillips fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

There was a RAF station down the lane opposite our house in Swansea, and my mother put some of the RAF staff up for some extra money. Later on some American airmen were there and I’m sorry to say my mother refused to have any black men at the house, although she put up the white Americans. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want black men. She didn’t say anything bad about them but she didn’t want them as lodgers. I think she was prejudiced. Unless you were living in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay you very rarely saw black people in Swansea — until the Americans came. I think they were the first black people I saw.
The soldiers were really nice, they gave me pocket money and chocolate which we couldn’t get apart from on ration books.

I can remember my parents waking me up in the early hours of one morning when I was about five or six years old to watch an hour-long convoy of army vehicles passing down our road. Mostly lorries and jeeps, I vaguely remember them carrying troops but I’m not sure. They were going inland, away from Swansea, so I don’t know where they were going. I was overawed really because I’d never seen anything like that. There were very few vehicles on the roads in those days and milk, bread and paraffin for heaters were all delivered by horse and cart.

My mother’s sister worked in the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Airforce Institution) and she used to send me tins of peanuts, which you couldn’t get then, and flashy American ties with Lucky Stripe or Camel cigarette packets printed on them. I was only a kid but I remember those ties.

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