大象传媒

The Second World War began when I was 6 years old, and ended when I was 12 years old. During that time the most important thing in my life was moving from Junior to Grammar School in Caerphilly. I was not allowed to go to a better school in Cardiff, to which I had a scholarship - because it involved a train and bus journey and my parents feared for my safety.

Despite all the changes and events surrounding me I have no recollection of fear or horror. It was all quite interesting. Even when a classmate lost her father at sea I was merely curious.

Junior School was evacuated when the sirens sounded, when Cardiff seven miles to the south, was targeted. Children living nearby were sent home to safety. We who lived further off were assigned to one of these and went with them. My friend lived in a tiny old cottage flanked by two high buildings. If they had come down we would have been squashed flat. But it was all fun to us. I still have a small round disc with my name and address to be worn around the neck. I was blissfully unaware that its purpose was to identify my dead or injured body.

Even when I picked up and read a book by Wilfred Blunt 鈥� intended to warn people about the conditions they could expect under Nazi domination. I read of a woman whose husband was in the hands of the Gestapo 鈥� who promised that he would be returned soon 鈥� of course he arrived in an urn full of ashes. My father caught me and was incensed. 鈥淟ook what she鈥檚 reading,鈥� he said as he confiscated it. I realize now that all adults must have been in considerable fear of invasion but I don鈥檛 think my parents ever conveyed their fear to me.

We lived in Caerphilly, South Wales. My father was a schoolmaster in the local Grammar School 鈥� he was above the call-up age by a few years. I had a sister 3 years younger. But my parents were both Swansea people and we spent the school holidays there.

After the three successive nights of heavy bombing in February 1941 we had no news of their families; the telephones were out of order. Father teaching during the week had to wait until Saturday before he could go by train to see whether they had survived. Apart from an incendiary bomb in a clothes cupboard my father鈥檚 family were ok. My mother鈥檚 family lived on a hill overlooking the bay, but they were market people 鈥� fruiterers and greengrocers. The market was surrounded by a brick wall covered by a metal and glass roof. Crowded with permanent stalls, this had become an inferno. My aunt was most upset by the loss of her cat because as she recalled 鈥� she had kittens and would not leave them.

My father鈥檚 father was a key steelworker. He was in charge of the furnaces at Cwm Bwla and by looking at the fire he could tell the exact time to 鈥榯ap鈥� the molten steel which ran white hot into long troughs on the floor. One night when the plant was shut down for the night he went over to the works to make sure all was well; when the siren sounded: the German bombers were targeting the steelworks so he went down alone into the shelter and an enormous explosion sucked all the air from the shelter. Unable to breath he was preparing to die when another explosion blew the air back in and he went home unscathed.

My mother was a good manager. As food became scarce and the children needed their Vitamin C she uprooted the shrubs and flowers in the back garden and planted blackcurrant bushes. The crops were stupendous. I remember the boredom, picking the things hour after hour, but she made tarts, jam and bottled fruit in huge quantities 鈥擨鈥檝e never really liked them since.

Sugar became very scarce but she bought Glaxo powdered glucose from the chemist and we had glucose sandwiches.

At Christmas, presents were a real problem: one year she bought loose wooden beads 鈥� old stock from an art shop, and with a few loose beads of her own, made my sister and I necklaces each, mine was predominately red and my sister鈥檚 blue. The next year she made me a needlework case. The outside was green velvet with a corded edge and a band of bright red tartan; the compartments inside for cotton reels etc. of the same tartan.

So scarce was the stock in shops that I remember Woolworths roped off most of their empty counters and filled the rest as best they could with useless stuff like pipe cleaners and rusting safety pins.

We always spent the long summer holiday with mother鈥檚 family in Swansea, which has a spectacular beach stretching for miles to Mumbles Head with its amusement pier to the west.

During the war we still spent the days in the sun but the sand had turned from gold to grey due to the dirt and tar and jettisoned rubbish from the ships going into Swansea docks. But we did our best; often the only holiday makers there, with concrete tank traps and the barbed wire fences enclosing the minefields all around. We left the dog at home because strays got inside the wire and set off the mines.

Then at night I remember the foghorns sounding when the invisible ships under blackout restrictions sneaked into the Swansea docks.

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