Memories of a 7yr old girl of 1939-45 in Swansea

I was born on Monday 4th April 1932, at 14 Courtney Street, Manselton, Swansea. Our house was a terrace with four rooms downstairs and four bedrooms which were very large. It had a lovely back garden which my Grandfather Goodwin (who was a sawyer on Swansea Docks) tended with love. At the bottom of our garden was the railway line to West Wales, and the first memory I have is seeing King George VI and Queen Elizabeth riding in the observation (open of course) on their Welsh tour after their coronation, it was thrilling. Beyond the railway was Cwmfelin Tin Works. Beyond that was a glorious view of the Roman Catholic cathedral of St Josephs, it used to take my breath away and still does when I visit my daughter in Manselton.

My childhood was a happy one until September 1939 when World War II was declared and everyone was looking so worried and quiet. The things which frightened me as a child of seven was hearing the siren having a practice, because we didn’t know as children whether this horrible man Hitler was going to come walking up our street.

When we were given our gasmasks, we had to take them everywhere with us and even had them hanging on the end of the bed but I wasn’t really frightened of it as I had my Mammy and Daddy to calm my fears they would make fun of it when they tucked me up at night as did my Mam and Dad (my maternal grandparents) and my Auntie Gwyneth (my mothers youngest sister, who I loved to bits). I didn’t have far to go to school which was Manselton, but one dinner time I had just come out of school and the air raid siren went, we all ran down Manor Road and as we turned the corner we saw our parents running to gather us up and take us home and my Daddy was there, he lifted me up and ran to get home safely, because as he said the Germans were keen to hit the tin works and the docks which we could see from where we lived.

My Mammy’s sister Gwyneth came back to live in Courtney Street as by 1940 she was married and was expecting a baby, so she wasn’t to live on her own as her husband David had gone into the Royal Army Service Corps. At the time the adults made faces in front of me when they talked about Gwyneth, as then little girls were not supposed to know where babies came from, but my friend Vera who was older than me had heard her mother explain this mystery and she had told all of us. Another thing that sticks in my mind was that Vera’s little four-year-old cousin had died and her Gran had invited all the children into the front parlour to see the little one in her coffin, she looked so pretty, dressed as an Irish Coleen, with pretty shoes she had on, all shiny and holding her doll, it was the first time for me to see a little dead girl.

The air-raids were scary and the siren would go off at anytime, one Friday my Mammy and I were playing a game and it was after teatime and we didn’t have time to go to the shelter in the garden (some people had them as tables in their living rooms) so my Mammy bundled me, herself my Grandfather (Grandmother was in her friends and so was Gwyneth) under the table but I started crying because I couldn’t take my doll Sheila and my new music case with me as there would have been no room (I had just started to learn to play the piano and I didn’t want my music case to get burned). After the raid was over my Mammy and Grandfather were laughing because I had so much stuff under the table only their heads were covered by the table.

One of the many terrible raids we had (and there were many) was when the area of the Cwm was bombed, no one went to sleep in our street that night. I was in bed and you could hear men shouting and running and when I got up my Mother told me about the Cwm as many people were killed and men from all over were there helping put out the fires, getting people from houses and also the women in Courtney Street were making cocoa and sandwiches as well as giving blankets and clothes all night because people had lost everything including their homes. After the war the whole area had to be rebuilt.

From 19th to 21st February 1941 we had what was known as the ‘Three Nights Blitz’ It was simply horrendous, I was now nine years old, on the first night we were able to go to our shelter in the garden but we seemed to be there all night, the sky was red over Swansea, Townhill and Mayhill. Many people were killed. Second night the centre of the town was ablaze, also the docks, St Thomas and Port Tennant, many were killed. Third night, Townhill again and town, also bombing the steelworks and that is how Manselton and Waun Wen lost lives and homes. We were unable to get to our shelter that night as incendiary bombs had landed in our garden and they were on fire. To make matters worse we couldn’t leave the house as a bomb had come down outside our house and it had hit the water-main in the road and all I could see was a huge crater full of water when we were guided around it to a neighbours house and all the children and babies were in the ladies indoor shelter until the all-clear sounded. When the adults were able to see what had happened and who had homes and who didn’t, I then had to sleep with my Mother’s sister and her little baby Ken as her husband David was then in the army, My Mother and Father slept at a friends house in Richard Street, Manselton and my Gran and Grandpa slept at 50 Phillip Street with my Gran’s friend. Next morning the adults went to see if they could go home, but the house was unsafe and the roof had been blown off. By that time my Dadcu (Fathers, father) had come from Fforsetfach and said we were to go and stay at his house, also my Mother’s sister Gwladys had come and taken Gwyneth, Ken, Gran and Grandpa to her house which was also in Fforestfach. So I never went to Manselton School again, I didn’t start school until May at Cwmbwrla and didn’t like it. Then there was a place for me at Gendros so I went there after the August holidays.

We moved from my Dadcu’s house in August to the house in Weig Road where we stayed, my Auntie Gwyneth moved to Middle Road with my Gran and Grandpa, Gwyneth, Ken and baby Michael, they later went to the Rhondda for part of the war to be with my Auntie Mary who was evacuated from London with her son Keith. We went as a family for a weeks holiday with them and had a lovely time away from everything. We had to come back home as my Father had to go back to work and I had to start back at my new school. The air raids kept on even during the day but we had a big air-raid shelter in the yard so we never went home and it was back to class after the raid was over. During the nights it was under the stairs if we had a raid and the raids got less and stopped in about 1943.

One Saturday morning there was a big fuss on the main road as a convoy of American soldiers that was travelling for miles along Carmarthen Road had stopped. They were kind to all us children and gave us sweets and chewing gum, but we didn’t know where they were going. In the afternoon they moved off perhaps to West Wales. There was a camp on what was known locally as the racecourse of American soldiers and sailors but at different times and then the camp went quiet as they had all left. We heard later that they were in Europe.
Then in May 1945 the war in Europe ended, there were messages on the radio from Churchill and the King, everyone loved him and the Queen. Things came back to normal, no more blackouts, but rationing seemed to go on forever. In August the war with Japan ended and we had a party for VJ Day on 15th August 1945. Then we saw the poor men coming back form the Japanese POW camps, they were like walking skeletons and many died after coming home, they looked pitiful. We had one man return to our chapel (Zoar) after being imprisoned by the Japanese, he was married to one of our members and he lived a long time after the war but he was changed by the whole experience he had gone through, in fact we were all changed in some way or other, war does that.

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