大象传媒

After I was born in Broad Haven (Haverfordwest side) in 1932 the youngest of 6 children, my mother died of septicaemia. Some time later we moved to 15 Perrots Terrace Haverfordwest we were there when was broke out, we moved to Neyland for a short while, then to 3 Prospect Place before Viburnum House, Victoria Road, Pembroke Dock. As it was a large house, we had to billet 3 RAF men, John, Charles and Bernard. I slept in the attic room and when there was an air raid I had 3 flights of stairs to go down to get to the under stairs cupboard, as we did not have an air raid shelter in our garden. I remember an incendiary bomb came through the roof and my father pushing the burning mattress from my sister鈥檚 bed out of the window. It was one of these bombs that had not exploded landed in the field behind the officer鈥檚 quarters, opposite the Dockyard, some children were throwing stones at it, knowing the danger I carefully picked it up (I was only 9 years old) and carried it to the Dockyard entrance where the RAF guards fetched an officer who took the bomb from me and put it in a bucket of sand.

When the sirens sounded while I was at school one day, (Albion Square) we all filed out to the air raid shelter in the playground a Sealyham dog started biting some of the girls, I had the worst, a big lump out of the back of my leg and I was carried to the hospital in Park Street, I still have the scar.

When the tanks were bombed it was a lovely sunny day. I was playing with my friend in Princes Street standing over her garden wall, when there was this huge explosion and a German Plane flew quite low overhead, machine gunning some houses. Our house was hit on the side. The strange thing was, I had no fear. That was a dreadful time when the tanks burned for 3 weeks and all those poor men lost their lives.

I remember climbing over rubble going to school after the night raids and the smell of gas and having to carry our gas masks everywhere. After the worst of the bombing was over we moved back to Broad Haven as my stepmother was so frightened, the bungalow which we later renamed 鈥淪t Catharins鈥� is situated just above the cliff, one night while we were asleep a German sea mine exploded when it hit the rocks, my head was cut by glass from by bedroom window which had been damaged. There must be lots of things that would come to mind when someone speaks to them.

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