大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥� War by a volunteer from The Chepstow Society on behalf of Dennis Harper and has been added to the site with her permission. Dennis Harper fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

My first memory of the Second World War was the wireless broadcast by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, who informed the nation that we are at war with Germany. It was a Sunday morning, the 3rd September 1939 and every family listened to this broadcast. I was 7 and a half years of age and can vividly recall the tension when the Prime Minister spoke, even though the announcement had little significance for me. I could not understand why my mother was crying, but later in life I began to realise the consequence of war. I also realised that as she was born in 1892 she had experienced the tragedy of the 1914 - - 1918 war.
Probably she realised the futility of such conflict and the loss of so many young lives, people of her age and younger.

I was attending Rogiet Junior and Infant School. The building no longer exists as the site is now covered with houses. I can remember being issued with gas masks that became a part of our personal property and had to be carried wherever we went. It was criminal to be caught without your mask. We had regular training sessions during school hours - - putting our gas mask on, evacuating the classroom and marching in an orderly fashion to the newly built air raid shelter in the playground. I was never comfortable in my gas mask and felt as if I would suffocate when wearing it. Thank goodness that we didn鈥檛 have to use them.

The local school head teacher lived in Rogiet, about 100 yards from me. He was a well respected man and a great leader within the community. He seemed to be at the centre of most of the defence organisations set up in the early part of the war. The local siren was situated over his front door so my father, mother, two brothers and I had no excuses when the siren sounded. We all dreaded the wailing sound of the siren warning us of an impending air raid. The head teacher organised the ARP and was the first point of contact within the village. During the war we were encouraged to save and the money was used by the government for the war effort in exchange for savings certificates. I can remember collecting wild rose hips and blackberries for government appeals.

Blackouts became part of our lives. We all had to ensure that no light penetrated the very black material that every house had as curtains. Every window in the house was taped in a diagonal fashion to prevent flying glass. I cannot remember helping with the taping but I can remember removing it from the windows at the end of the war. Cars and cycles had very little lighting so everyone had to be aware of the dangers. There were few cars as many households could not afford such a luxury. Car owners who had to use the roads to carry on their business, such as farmers, needed to know their way around as all sign posts had been removed for the duration of the war.

Everyone seemed to pull together to make the best out of the situation. I remember the ration books but not so much the effect that rationing had on my family. I know it deprived us of many luxuries. Living in Rogiet amongst a railway dominated population, everyone had a garden and seemed to grow sufficient food to keep us going. My mother made bread when she could get the flour; my father kept chickens and cockerels so we always seemed to have a supply of eggs. Chicks hatched every year so the production line continued. The very old hens were killed off and eaten. I remember my mother boiling chickens for hours to eat and so help make up for the lack of meat. We also had a supply of wild rabbits, living so closely as we did to the quarry and woods. I was taught to shoot at an early age and often went out with my father to hunt rabbits. Milk was delivered by the local farmer to the door and measured into the householder鈥檚 jug. This milk would not have been pasteurised and was very creamy.

During the 1930鈥檚 the row of houses where I lived went on main drainage. Everyone had an old cesspit and early in the war the people were encouraged to clean their cesspit and convert it into an air raid shelter. My father and my next - door uncle worked together and eventually produced two underground shelters. These shelters were used regularly by us during the first part of the war, especially when the Germans bombed Bristol and Cardiff. Often we left our beds, to transfer by a small torch light to the shelter, taking our blankets with us.

The first bombs to drop on the Rogiet area were in August 1940. One of these bombs claimed the only civilian life, a boy of 12 years of age - - -
Grenville Pritchard. Unfortunately, Grenville who was supposed to be in bed, went outside to watch the searchlights and was caught by the blast of a bomb that landed near the Rogiet Hotel. His mother was a district nurseand was about to go on duty when she discovered his body in the front garden. The whole school lined the road outside the school as his funeral cortege passed on its way to St. Mary鈥檚 Church, Rogiet, where he was laid to rest.

Around 1942 further bombs fell in the Dewstow area and I wondered whether they were meant for the RNPF at Caerwent. Other bombs fell in the Minnett鈥檚 Wood and on the railway marshalling area without causing much damage.

Looking back, Rogiet was very vulnerable since the village had the main Paddington to Wales railway line to the south, the Royal Naval Propellant factory to the north at Caerwent and Severn Tunnel Junction contained a large marshalling yard. Rogiet was also in the path of the bombers when Bristol was attacked and also when Cardiff was bombed. I believe that the enemy pilots were looking for the Severn Tunnel and the RNPF. Also, the area had to contend with the guns placed at Sudbrook and searchlights placed in various positions to guard the Severn Estuary. Shells frequently whizzed over the houses to explode in mid air. It was difficult to tell which were shells or whether bombs were dropping.

In the early 1940鈥檚 I recall numerous passenger trains travelling through Severn Tunnel junction full of evacuees. I became very friendly with several evacuees, from Kent and a family from Guernsey who were housed at a local farm.

The local Auxiliary Fire Unit operated from Caldicot and as youngsters we followed them and watched them training. Ifton Quarry was a frequently used area because of the surplus water in one of the exhausted quarries. Other exhausted quarries at Ifton were used by the Home guard and soldiers for training with live ammunition.

In 1942, one of our spitfires tried an emergency landing in a field between Rogiet and Caldicot. However, it ran out of space and ploughed through the hedge, finally landing upside down in the Band Hut field. Within minutes there were 30 - 40 local people at the scene, including me. Fortunately, he was not injured and shouted to us all to run away from the plane. Little did we realise that the plane could have exploded. He was very grateful for his rescue and we were thanked by the various authorities.

When Bristol was bombed and the petroleum storage facilities at Avonmouth were hit, the whole sky was lit up by the fires. My parents took me to Bristol just after the raids and I can remember vividly the streets that had been destroyed and the demolished shops with cash tills and stock amongst the rubble.

In late 1940 my father was issued with an indoor Morrison Shelter that took up most of the living room space. These shelters were supposed to be safer than the outdoor ones. The issue of these shelters was by a selection process and our family was probably entitled to one because there were 2 children in the home. The top of the shelter was used as a table because of the lack of space and it became part of the furinture until the war ended . We slept in the shelter when it seemed there might be an air raid - - it was much warmer in this room because of the coal fire.

During the war my father worked on the railway and was, therefore, exempt from call up for the services. He was a registered member of the Fire Fighting Party organised by the Chepstow District Council, possessing the powers of entry and of extinguishing fores or for protecting property or rescuing persons or property from fire. Often, his railway work kept him away for long hours and sometimes for days, occasionally he went to Swindon or London, on a Double Home shift, in his role as goods guard. My mother used to worry when he was on this 鈥渢urn鈥� since full responsibility at home rested with her.

During the war a goods train was derailed near Undy and one of the damaged wagons contained bananas - - a fruit we had not seen for years ! My father told me about the bananas and the local gang cycled to Undy to see what bananas were like. The wagon had split open and there were many green bananas lying around. They were sampled and caused us all to have stomach upsets.

My cousin was a Flight Engineer in the Royal Air Force training pilots in South Africa. He volunteered to return to England to join Bomber Command. He brought with him some oranges from South Africa, again a fruit we had not eaten since the beginning of the war. Sadly, after numerous bombing raids over Germany his plane received a direct hit and he, with many of the Lancaster crew were killed.

When the war ended we all rejoiced, flags were flown, church bells rung, sirens disbanded but rationing continued.

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