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This account was submitted to the site by Helen Hughes, of the People's War team in Wales, on behalf of Peggy Murdie and has been added to the site with her permission.

I used to live on Caerphilly Road, Birchgrove, I was brought up there…. We had a bomb dropped at the back of us and we was all evacuated out in buses. The brickworks was behind us so a bomb dropped there and the police come with buses and took us all out. Because they was afraid the bomb was going to go off. We stayed the night in Glaston school in Crwys Road and I’d never tasted Weetabix before…but that’s what we had for breakfast the next day. When there was an air raid we used to go in the shelter first…but the shelter filled up with water so we used to go under the stairs then. I lived with my gran and my cousin and my gran used to have two suitcases one with food and one with all the documents in and she used to fetch them down all the time, and we used to take them underneath the stairs with us.
We were under the stairs when the bomb dropped…and this knock come to the door and they said “Come on you’ve all got to get out”, they said. So my gran said “I’m not going” and he said “You’ve got to- there’s a bomb in the back of your garden.” So they got us out and we took the bird in the cage on the bus with us…and the two dogs and then we went down there. The next day they let us back…but all our windows was all broke and that…so the rest of the war we lived with wooden windows…no windows in. I must have been about six or seven….I can remember it so plain. And I can remember hearing the aircraft coming over. It’s something — you know — then you’d hear the noise of the sirens and that and you’d think “Oh no, hear we go again” …and you’d get under the stairs and your teeth would be chattering because you’d be cold and scared. It was very scary.

My Gran used to lay people out…and even if there was an air raid they used to come and knock the door and say “Mrs. Allen…Mrs. So and so’s died will you come and do the works.” And me and my cousin used to say “Oh Nanny, don’t go out, don’t go out” “I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go”…but she used to have a brown bag and she had two pennies in there and some bandages — and we hated that bag me and my cousin. But then some days if we were short of money — say a Thursday or something — she used to say “go and get the penny out of the brown bag for the gas meter” ….

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