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My name was Margaret Taylor, at the start of the war I was a child of 6 1/2 years, living at 16 Beam Avenue, Dagenham in East London. It was a Thursday night at the end of August 1939. My Mother took the curtains down and made us all knapsacks for our backs, because tomorrow my Brother Douglas aged 8, my Brother David 4 ½ years, and my sister Elaine who was 18 moths old were being evacuated out of the area. I was too small to carry my sister so my Mother was allowed to come with us. We were to be evacuated the next morning out of Dagenham where my Father worked in the Ford Motor Company.

The knapsacks were so that we could carry our clothes ourselves as my Mother had the baby to carry. The next morning we all went out onto the road and walked behind a banner with our school name on it. This was three days before war was declared. Off we went to the station, one behind the other. We walked to the docks and boarded a boat, the Golden Eagle, which took us from Dagenham to Great Yarmouth. I remember looking at the dykes and my Mother telling me that as Yarmouth was so flat the grass banks kept the tide back.

We made our way to a big private school, we filled mattresses with straw for beds, and apples were cut in half, I had half an apple before going to bed. There were taps that you turned and out came milk. I was with my mother on the Sunday morning, we were sitting by the lake, she was combing my blonde hair and my brothers were playing, when some one came and told us that the war had started.

Next we found ourselves all together and we were sent to a farm. I remember the stairs in the corner of the room behind a curtain and outside a duck pond with a small island, which had a plum tree on it. What lovely big sweet plums. But my brothers and I became severely ill through eating too many plums.

My Mother sent a message to my Father, who took a chance and ‘Borrowed’ a van from Ford’s. He put a mattress in the back, and a few other things he picked up from the house. 5 Years earlier we had moved to Dagenham from Swansea so he took us back there to live with my Grandmother. My Grandmother lived in a Council House in Nicanda Parade, in Swansea. In those days it was forbidden to take in lodgers, the Council told her that we would have to move out, even though she lived there on her own and three of her sons were off fighting the war.

We stayed in Swansea and my Mother and Father had 10 children over a period of 20 years. It was a good job we were evacuated as our house in Dagenham was bombed and was rebuilt many years after the war was over, so we all lived to tell the story.

Mrs Margaret Halfpenny
Swansea.

NEXT CHAPTER - US IN SWANSEA

World War II moved on and so did Margaret Taylor and her family. I was 6 years old when I was evacuated from Dagenham on the Paddle Steamer the Golden Eagle to Great Yarmouth, and then on to Swansea, where we had come from 5 years before.

My father joined us in Swansea, there was my Mother, Brother Douglas 71/2, David 4 and Elaine 11 months. The house in Dagenham had been bombed, but at least we had survived.

We stayed at my Grandmother’s, she lived on the hill overlooking Swansea docks and the bay, where I watched the blitz of Swansea. I stayed with my Grandmother on weekends as her 3 sons were away fighting the war. The family went to live with my Mother’s bachelor uncle at 55 Danagraig Road, which was close to the docks. One night incendiary bombs fell on us, they were small bombs like flares to light the sky, they came through the roof and fell onto my Uncle’s bed. He was a strong man so he picked the flaming mattress up and threw it over the banister and dragged it out through the door. The only water we had was the tap on the wall out the back. The house was lit by gas mantles so delicate they fascinated me, having come from a modern semi-detached in Dagenham.

We moved again to my Father’s Mother’s house. Gran Taylor lived in a large house on the sea front called ‘Priton Villas’, which had bell pushes in the front rooms and a lovely veranda on the second floor overlooking the LMS railway that swept along the bay to the docks. I would sit on this veranda looking out from time to time over the war years. I saw tank after tank, heavy lorry after heavy lorry, and gun after gun, rolling along on heavy trains on this LMS railway line, which was only yards away, on their way to the docks day and night.

We all slept in the attic as Gran’s house was taken over by the military. The room with the veranda was a navel officer’s room so we used to go through it during the day when he was not there, out on to the veranda to look out to sea.

We all moved again, the Council gave us a house on the other side of the hill from where my Mother’s Mother lived.

One day my Father, Brother and the chap next door started to dig a hole in the garden for the ‘Anderson Shelter’ the dreaded ‘shelter’. (I did not like creepy crawlies) Dad covered the ground with a bell tent he was given, in went the bunk beds, a torch, and anything else we needed went in, and so did we carrying our blankets. One night the house behind us was bombed, a direct hit, and in the morning an unexploded time bomb was in the garden. We also lived near a railway and we would listen to the bombs whisteling down on to the railway. The oil refinery on the other side of town at Llandarcy lit the sky when it was hit.

In the morning out we went on our way to school, looking for shrapnel for my bothers. Our school was Powis School there was a big field close by. If you could run home in 3 or 4 minutes when the siren went you could go home. If not you had to go to the big concrete shelter, where you had a treat off the teacher of a sweet. We had dinners in school, they were nice but had no salt, so we took salt in an asprin bottle.

I visited my Gran often where I learnt to knit and crochet, also to make lovely dinners with fresh veg and fruit from her garden. Gran grew all by her self, she dug the ground and tended to it all by herself. She was a good age as her husband had been in the first world war.

I spent many weekends with her, I went from school on a Friday evening and left for school on a Monday morning, picking my way through the rubble from bombed houses.

One road Teilo Crescent had an ‘Ack Ack’ gun in it so nearly every house was bombed because they were trying to hit the gun.

Gran and I went to Swansea on Saturday mornings, the centre was flat from bombing, only a church and the cinemas were left. We passed a ruin, it was used for a shelter, it was a church crypt, it was a mess so they put quick lime in it and left it. I think the street was Goat Street. The army built a ‘Bailey Bridge’ as the rubble was so bad so that people could get from one level to the other.

Food was in short supply but my mother and grans were good cooks. We had Rabbit from the market, and corned beef and offal from the butchers. Soup was made with help from bacon and meat bones. We made cake with caraway seeds, liquid paraffin, black dates and dried bananas. On the way to school we would buy carrots and drag them on the rough wall to skin them and then eat them.

Christmas was so looked forward to, a chicken or duck, even if my Father had to kill it first and my Mother and I plucked it. For presents it was a sewing box for me, my Mother gathered bits and bobs for it, and for the two boys dad made a fort, swords and shields. Mam also made rag dolls and Dad even sold some of them, but that’s another story.

MARGARET HALFPENNY
SWANSEA.

ON TO VICTORY

The bombing of Swansea continued and Dad was a Fire Warden. When he finished work as a shell case presser in the ICI works he would go out with his tin hat and a whistle to walk the streets a few evenings a week when he was not on fire watch at work. The ICI had a canteen where the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ broadcast a programme called ‘Workers Playtime’ to the workers every lunch time. At Christmas we went there to have a children’s party.

In November 1941 Mam had a baby boy called Fred. We had National Dried Milk for the baby and orange juice for the rest of us. The orange juice was very nice and lasted a long time because it was very concentrated. Along with the orange juice there were bottles of Cod Liver Oil.

Occasionally at school we had chocolate powder from the U.S.A. We all took a small tin or jam jar to get it and hurried home to make a chocolate drink or sometimes Mam made chocolate sweets.

There were seven of us now and Mam had to move off the hill we were living on. Dad bought a house in the Uplands, and so we moved again. The uplands was a nice place to live, we had Cwmdonkin Park nearby and The Grove which was a big green with tall trees with an air raid shelter on it. We held our VE Day party on the green.
The ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ radio studio in Alexandra Road was bombed so thy moved into a hall in the Grove.

Victory in Europe came and we had our party on the Green, it went on all day, we had a bonfire and dancing, it was all fun and joy.

But we had friends and their father was a Prisoner of War of the Japanese in the far east, but by August the war in the far east came to an end.

One day I was walking down the road and a very tall thin gaunt man was coming up the road, I will always remember him. It was Mr Thorn, it was our friend’s Dad home from the Japanese camp.

I went on to marry John in RAF uniform in 1955, he was stationed in Colerne and we went on years later to join the Royal Observer Corps during the so called Cold War.

World War II and being an evacuee was just one episode in my long life.

Margaret Halfpenny
Swansea

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