大象传媒

Although I'm almost 84, my memory of the Second World War is as clear as yesterday, from the time Neville Chamberlain declared "We are now at war" it still seems like yesterday. My most memorable thoughts are the 3 nights blitz of Swansea.

We lived in the centre of the town just by the library and police station, I can remember my Dad, coming and shaking me awake when the air raid siren was going, we went to the end of our street to what was called the Ragged School, it had a huge room in the basement, to which everyone made for, the church at the back of our house, Holy Trinity Church was hit, and when I slipped up to our house, Treseder the oil merchant just across the main road had been hit and the flames were leaping high into the sky. The water mains had been hit, but they managed to connect the water. They put a pipe, a large one into our passage as the church was at the back of our garden I was in the passage the water suddenly came through, and me being just 7 stone, it lifted me into the air and landed me down the bottom of the garden, I don't have to tell you it was a very long garden and I was very wet. We moved temporarily up to my Sisters in Baglan, I applied to work in Bridgend Arsenal, where munitions were made, it was as a civil servant wages clerk, my name being Richenda Wydenbach which I think is German, I believe my great grandfather became a naturalised British subject, when I think it was when Eligoland and Zanzibar were exchanged but if I had been 'Olga the beautiful spy' my interview couldn't have gone on longer it was practically an interrogation, needless to say I did get the job.

My Fianc茅, was called up for 6 months with the Militia, which turned into 6陆 years serving in West Africa the 'white mans grave' as it was then called. And also in India and Burma where he rose to Sergeant Major, thank God he came back home to me at the end of the War, he went in an excellent fit young man but came home a very different man, suffering very badly from malaria and experiences which he could never forget they refer to the men who served in Burma as the 'Forgotten Army' and it is very true, with the way they served their country, No welcome home, no remembrance of what they did, and what they went through, and for what? These wars will always go on, while evil and greedy men still try to pretend they are making a better world. Bush with his war, what has he achieved? Simply opened Pandora's box and made the world even more unsafe than it was before.

I forgot to say the town being blown up so much nearly beyond recognition people were taken, so I was told, blindfolded on their hands and knees, down to the Docks areas. Oh and I remember I met a friend of mine from school days, I smiled and went up to speak to her she really went, for me a cousin of mine I hardly knew, had collected her husband who had gone AWOL (absent without leave) and taken him back, so of course needless to say I was no longer a friend of hers I was extremely sorry to hear what had happened but I hardly think I could be blamed Do you? Although with my husband serving so far away I could still understand her sadness at what had happened.

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