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It was September 1939, I was at Sunday School, the air raid siren sounded - we were at war with Germany. At the time it did not mean much to me and my friends, we were only eight years old. No television to watch, we saw some details in the news programmes when we went to the cinema but that wasn’t very often. However, although there was little or no bombing in our area it soon did affect us. Shelters of brick and concrete were erected in every street. Early in 1940 I spent some months shuffling between local schools. Finally one morning I found myself with a hundred or so other children on the bus to Acton station. I had a rucksack with my spare clothes and a label tied to my coat giving my name age and school details. Strangely the only thing I can remember about that day was the huge sign on the factory adjacent to the station which said `Walls Pork Sausages’, perhaps I was upset, perhaps my brain has blotted that day out. We were off to be evacuated, to be safe from the German bombers which were to pound London night after night. We did not know where we were going or how long it would take. Eventually after some hours on the train, we arrived at Bridgend in South Wales. We were then transported on buses to surrounding villages, in our case to Caerau a little mining village some miles up the valley from Bridgend.

We assembled in the hall of the local school and people arrived who would be our foster parents during our stay. I was to stay with a family of four, Mr and Mrs Dobbins their son Leslie ten years old and daughter Betty who was seven years old. We all lived in a terraced house with no front garden. Mr. Dobbins was a miner at one of the local pits, Nantyffyllon about a mile down the road from Caerau. Mr and Mrs Dobbins were kind to me. Apart from being home sick my only problem was Leslie who was older and bigger than me and a bully. He often got up to mischief; somehow he usually managed to get me blamed for what he had done. The house had no bathroom, we bathed in front of the fire in a galvanized bath in the main living room, this included Mr. Dobbins who naturally came home covered in coal dust every night from the pit. Fortunately after a few months the pit installed showers for the miners to use when they came off shift, so he came home clean. We boys were allowed to go there weekly for a shower which was far more pleasant and quite good fun.

I went to the local school (Blaenllynfi), I soon found that I had to learn a second language Welsh. Generally the local people spoke English except for odd phrases which crept in to conversation, or if they did not want you to know what they were talking about! A lot of the older people spoke Welsh all the time. I can remember numbers and odd words, most of the Welsh National Anthem, which I always sing ,to my wife’s annoyance, when the Welsh are playing rugby on television. It was a very different life for me to get used to, we were surrounded by hills and in the countryside. Although the village was covered in grime from the coal dust and the hills were black and scarred from the mining it had its own beauty and I loved it.

All our bread was home made, Auntie Mary mixed the flour and yeast and made the dough which she placed in a loaf tin. She then put a little label on top with her name and one of us would take it to the village bakery in the High Street a couple of hundred yards away, they baked it for us. We collected another which had been taken for baking the day before.

At the back of the houses which were terraced was a lane about ten feet wide which was known as ‘the gully’, each house had a gate at the bottom of the garden which opened onto it, and the dustbins were collected from here. In the cold weather the sheep that habitually roamed the village would sometimes come into back gardens looking for shelter and warmth. On at least two occasions sheep were found in the back kitchen sheltering from the snow. One evening just before Christmas it started snowing really hard. Snow that I was used to back in Willesden had been a couple of inches in my experience. When we woke the next morning the snow was very deep, the front door was completely covered in a drift, the top of which could be seen through the skylight above the door. We had to dig our way out of the back door trudge through the gully and around to the front and then dig the snow away from the front door. We children thought it great fun and played snowballs and made snowmen.

Mum and dad sent me a second hand bicycle and as Leslie had a bike we often went for rides with our friends. Caerau is at the head of a valley and so to go north was all up hill and led to a village called Cymmer, so I don’t believe we ever went there. We often cycled south to Nantyffyllon and Maesteg which were about a mile and three miles respectively.

We also went walking on the hills, to the west of Caerau; from the top of the hill you could see the barrage balloons which were the defences for Swansea and Port Talbot. The towns were too far away to see, but older friends told us that was what they were. One day when we were up there we were in a dip on top of the hill and suddenly with no warning a Harvard aircraft flew over the hill straight at us. Such excitement, it was very low just missing the top of the hill and we saw the two pilots very clearly, it was so quick we didn’t even have time to wave; it was painted a bright yellow which meant that it was a training aircraft. We told everybody how we had nearly been run down by the RAF.

In the autumn of 1940 we cycled south to the woods outside Tondu (pronounced Tondee) a distance of ten miles. There by the side of the road were sweet chestnut trees, we collected loads of chestnuts in their green husks, it was quite an adventure. They were lovely, all the more so because we had got them ourselves and they were free! Imagine letting two or three 8-9 year old children cycle off ten miles on their own on the main roads these days!!

I think I had been in Wales for about eleven months when my parents decided it was safe for me to come home, they came to collect me. I said goodbye to all the family and my friends and returned to Willesden. On the whole I enjoyed my stay in Wales it was an experience I am glad that I had and it did keep me away from the bombing during the London Blitz, nevertheless I was glad to get home with my family.