大象传媒

It was a very cold and dark January night,it was Jan 1941 so with it being wartime we had the blackout which made it really dark,
As usual we went to bed half dressed,we did this as some nights we had to go into the air raid shelter, as soon as the air raid warning sounded, and we would'nt have time to get dressed not that we had to wait for the warning, we had Bingo, my airdale dog, and he would start howling whenever a German aircraft was about, strange he only did it for German planes,we were not in bed long when my mother started shouting, come on get up, a few mins later again, "come on get up they're overhead," so down we go to the damp smelling shelter, as we lived near the railway sheds and yards Ninian Park Road, Canton, Cardiff,it was the Railways and the Cardiff docks,being prime targets,that they were trying to bomb, this night it was a much heavier bombing noise, we would comment. "that was a close one" meaning the the bomb sounded close, we never seem to worry too much, in fact I, as a typical 11 year old, would come out of the shelter and watch the Molitov bread baskets(incendary bombs) falling.
when the raid was over, there was a loud banging on our front door, there was a big policeman, telling us, we had to get out of the house as fast as as we could ,as there was a land mine a few doors away, and as it was caught on the roof, had not gone off, they,the land mines came down by parachute, so out of the house we went, and was told to make our way to the city lodge hospital(St Davids) after only a short walk from our house, about 2 or 3 hundreds yards, we had to pass the site, that was the "close one" we heard drop,it was a terible sight for anybody to see, let alone a 11 year old child, it was a scene that I have remembered, and will remember for the rest of my life. we got to the hospital put into a large room. I remember seeing people on the floor with white sheets over them, I was hoping they were people asleep, after a while we were put on buses and taken to a church hall in Ely,we did'nt go straight through Cowbridge Rd, which would have been a lot quicker, we went through Llandaff.
We never got any sleep that night, but felt dirty and grubby, so as soon as it was light,we walked from Ely, to Ninian Park Road, when we got to Wellington Street, which was about two hundred yards from our house, there was a rope across the road, we went under that, walked up the road and went into our house to wash and get clean clothes, we came out of our house and continued walking to the other end of the road, when we got to Tudor Road, again there was a rope across the road, so we lifted it,went under it to the other side, Just then a policeman came up to us, and asked where we had been? we told him we had been to our house to wash and get clean clothes. he then said to us" There is a bomb up there just waiting to go off" he meant the land mine that we had just walked past, before we went into our house, kids we played with, were victims of something,they knew anything about. Yes! I will always remember . The night we was almost was'nt.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.