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This story was submitted by Helen Hughes of the People's War team in Wales on behalf of Sheila Carter John and has been added to the site with her permission.

I remember vividly the air raid siren going off in the middle of class…because I only lived round the corner by St Saviour’s church I was able to run home…and we never went back to school in the afternoon if it happened in the morning — we never went back in the afternoon. We’d take the day off! There was a big raid in Splott, and a lot of the houses went down. I remember getting out of the shelter one evening, one night, and houses in our street were on fire. And Moorlands Road School was bombed, so then we only went to school part time — they went in the mornings, we went in the afternoons, or they went in the afternoons and we went in the mornings. We thought it was great… we thought it was terrific. Of course we didn’t have a lot of education really. We weren’t allowed to go far…you played around your area with your friends. But we used to wander over to the park, which we weren’t supposed to. And Cardiff airport was at Tremorfa then so we did have a lot of bombs coming along. My father was one of the first to go off because he was in the TA. He came on leave before going over — he was one of the Desert Rats — and we were in the garden my little sister and I and of course we’d seen the bombs dropping over towards the airport, but we never bothered. My father panicked…threw us in the shelter…we said “Daddy what are you doing” “There’s bombs dropping, bombs dropping, keep down”…and my sister was crying. And my mother came out and said “Edgar, what are you doing” “There’s bombs, get down!” She said “No, they were over there….” You could judge and we got to know even as children what were our aeroplanes and what were theirs. My father said he couldn’t cope with it — he’d be glad to get back to the army, and then he didn’t come back again until after the war. He was one of the first in and one of the last out…..My mother said “Trust him”.
We used to go out in the streets in the day and pick up shrapnel — bits of crumpled metal….the boys used to think it was souvenirs. We girls weren’t that much interested but we used to collect it for the boys you know, every bit you had “You give me that and I’ll give you a sweet” you know…that’s the kind of thing we used to do with shrapnel — you want it — you give us one of your sweets. But I think we were too young to be scared — I was four when it started — I think we were a bit naïve…it was part of our lives. Our air raid shelter wasn’t damp and horrible we had bunks and my mother had what we called siren suits made out of old dressing gowns with legs and a zip up the front, and we put them on when we went down the shelter and we had little lamps, little blue and green lamps that we’d put up in the shelter…and we were quite cosy we just tucked down and went to sleep. And we had a potty there you’d take with you. And they knitted and read while we went to sleep. And people say they were hungry — we were never hungry. I think its because my mother and grandmother were good cooks I suppose. So I don’t remember ever being hungry like people say they were hungry and the only thing you missed was sweets. The only thing I remember was just after the war they’d say “they’ve got oranges round at the co-op” and you’d go and queue or “they’ve got ice-cream” in the other shop and you’d go and queue with your plate for ice-cream. Apart from that I don’t remember being hungry or cold or anything not like people say they were. Splott school…they knocked it down now…Moorland Road school is still there — they rebuilt part of it.

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