大象传媒

When war was declared on 3.9.39 I was just ten years old and attending Eveswell Elelmentary School, prior to doing what was called the Scholarship Exam for Secondary School or the Eleven Plus as it was later known.
As there weren't enough air raid shelters at the school, some of us who lived nearer were told to "run home" and shelter there! So Owen Jones and I one day had to make a run for it to our homes in Conway Road. We'd got as far as our backdoor step en route to our Anderson shelter at the foot of our garden when three German JU 52s passed overhead, fairly low and heading south having presumably been bombing the Royal Ordinance Factory at Glascoed to our north. (The JU 52s were three-engined bombers, which must have been rather unusual.) I was already in our shelter when I heard Owen shout from our backdoor step:-"They're bombing the docks", as the plane jettisoned their missiles, presumably to enable them to fly home lighter and to south east. They could well have done this onto the main railway line just beyond our shelter! Fortunately they must have thought the docks were a better target. I don't think the ROF factory just across the railway lines had been built at this time.

My second "encounter with the enemy" took place a couple of years later when several of us were cycling from Chepstow down t Beachley on the Bristol Channel. It started to rain and we dismounted for a bit of a breather when we heard the sound of some steady marching coming in our direction from about fifty troops in three columns. As they neared we saw that they were German POWs, prisoners of war, clad in dark drab rubber capes and forage caps. No steel helmets! And only a single British armed Tommy for a guard! I seem to recall that their capes seemed lop-sided and covered their right shoulder, leaving their left arms freer for better marching?

We saw lots of Italian POWs well before the end of "the war in Europe" as they were allowed to attend church. They were clad in dark brown blouson type jackets with bright yellow or orange circular patches for identity purposes. They were probably from camps at Penhow and various other points around Newport and were engaged on agricultural work.

I only ever saw one war wound, to my cousin Bert's left hand, just a single neat job entitling him to some home leave. He had to return to Holland and the "Battle of the Bulge" as it was known - I remember he celebrated his 21st on a Wednesday and was killed on the Friday of that same week. His sister, Lucy had lost her husband, Con Daly when the destroyer, HMS Matabele was sunk in Russian waters in January 1942. My only other relative to die in WW2 was another cousin, Berty Seignot, a rear-gunner in the RAF at a time when theri life-expectancy was three weeks! He lasted three months!!

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