The War years 1939 – 1945

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I was born in 1938 at the end of the Spanish Civil War and just before the start of the Second World War. It was a time of considerable turmoil in Europe. An uneasy peace had settled on Spain while German desires for expansion were rampant. After having been defeated in the First World War, and humiliated by the demands from France in the peace that followed it, they wanted to take back the territories they had just lost and, under Adolf Hitler, were keen to reassert themselves as a major force once again. Eastern European countries at that time were operating what were little more than peasant economies with 19th Century armed forces, while Russia was just about to enter into its revolution. All appeared to be easy meat to the sophisticated, determined might of a resurgent Germany. Even though we had agreed to go to the aid of Poland and Czechoslovakia should they ever be threatened again by Germany, there was much talk of appeasement in Britain. We didn’t have the stomach for another war. In any case, we were still trying to recover from the massive losses, both human and material, we had incurred in WW1. Unlike Germany which had secretly been being building up its army and munitions base in direct contravention of the Treaty of Versailles, we had allowed both our armed forces, our ship and aircraft building programs and our munitions capabilities to have lagged in the doldrums. In other words, we were nowhere near ready for another fight. The rest of the world, having come to the defense of a free Europe 20 years earlier were simply trying to get on with their own lives and saw no good reason, at that time, to come to the aid of a troublesome Europe once again.
At that time, my parents and my small, older sister were living in Cardiff, South Wales, in a tiny two-bedroom stone built terraced cottage to the east of the city centre. All the houses in the vicinity had been built by the Marquis of Bute more than a hundred years earlier to provide accommodation for his many workers. To remind him of his ancestral home, all the streets around our house, including our street, were named after members of his family or places on the Isle of Bute, which is off the west coast of Scotland. Indeed, many other streets as well as other parts of Cardiff, like the notorious Bute Town, otherwise known as Tiger Bay, also made reference to his place of birth. That said, it was not until seventy years later when I visited the Isle of Bute for the first time, that I recognized the significance of Lady Margaret, Gwendoline, Ascog, Kerrycroy and Kilkattan, to name but a few of the street names surrounding where I was brought up. My parents’ house was in the grandly named Lady Margaret Terrace and was identical to all the other houses nearby. My sister, Maureen, was just eighteen months older than me in age but, even then, was probably ten years older in outlook and attitude.
My father, James or Jim as he was known to everyone, was the oldest of eight children and was 36 years old when the war started but because he suffered from poor eyesight, he was not called on to fight. He was, of course, kept busy in the Home Guard as well as with his work in the very dangerous munitions factory that was not so very far from our house. While my father was not “called up”, two of his brothers, Dennis and Harry, served in the army, another brother, Gerald, served in the Royal Air Force and Bernard, the youngest brother, served in the Royal Navy. I don’t recall his sisters Lucy, Kitty and Joan ever serving in any capacity but then, except for Lucy who was the second oldest of my father’s siblings, Kitty and Joan were a lot younger than was my father s and at that time, lacking a father, who had died many years earlier, he was more like a father than a brother to them.
My grandmother, Bridget, lived in Janet Street which is hardly more than a stone’s throw from Lady Margaret Terrace. Indeed, all my father’s siblings lived in Cardiff with the exception of Bernard who lived in Birkenhead. He married a girl near the end of the war who lived there and that was where they chose to live. He only ever returned to visit Cardiff occasionally. My grandmother was probably in her mid to late fifties or early sixties when I was born but my recollection of her is of an old lady dressed solidly in black sitting in front of the fire. As I just mentioned, my grandfather had died years before I was born. His and my grandmother’s house was much larger than was my parent’s house and, according to my father, my grandfather had worked in a very well-paid but dangerous job that had led to his early death. The port of Cardiff was very much a coal port and ships from all over the world called in to load up on the black diamond, as it was called, taken from mines in the nearby Rhonda Valley. Thousands of tons of coal would be poured into a ships’ holds and it was my grandfather’s job to spread that coal evenly in the holds using only a shovel. He was what was called a coal trimmer and he lived his working life thick with sweat from his exertions and shrouded in coal dust. Without health and safety regulations to make sure no one’s health was put at risk and without all the modern conveniences we now take so much for granted, life was hard and sometimes deadly for people living in the first half of the Twentieth century. It was hardly any wonder they were either dead or old well before their time.
When hostilities were officially declared, families like ours were given an Anderson Shelter. They actually cost £7 but if you earned more than £5 a week, you had to buy your shelter. They were named after Sir John Anderson, the man appointed by the Prime Minister to prepare Britain for the war ahead. Though I was barely two years old, I can distinctly recall the parts being delivered to us and even “helping” my father construct it. He had previously dug a large hole about three feet deep in our tiny back garden into which the shelter would be slotted. Apparently, the shelter would withstand a bomb blast far better if it was partially buried. The actual shelter came in fourteen parts; six curved upper parts; six straight parts for the sides and two straight parts for each end, one with a door. All had to be bolted together, a bit like a modern-day IKEA wardrobe. It was actually a very robust structure when completed. The inner area could accommodate up to six people but it was left to individual taste to fit out. All the earth that was taken out from the hole into which the shelter was fitted was later used to cover it. My father grew flowers and herbs on it, I remember. The shelter was about six feet tall, six feet long and four and a half feet wide. We used it regularly at the start of the war but as the months and years passed, it fell out of use partly because we grew blasé to the dangers of falling bombs and partly because it was cold, damp and full of spiders. We preferred to huddle under the stair whenever an air-raid warning sounded.
Of course, there was rationing so it was rare to go to bed with a full belly. We even grew accustomed to the horrible spam, which became our main source of meat, together with the slightly less horrid corned beef. We ate semolina puddings, dried eggs, and tapioca, affectionately known as frogs spawn. Lard or dripping was used in place of butter or margarine. Deliveries of bread, groceries, milk and even vegetables were made by horse and cart, as was refuse collection. I never did, but many little boys used to go through the streets with a bucket and shovel collecting horse manure to put on their father’s allotments or gardens. My father had an allotment located a few miles away from our house so it was a fifteen minute bike ride to get to it. I often accompanied him on these trips, sitting on a special seat he made for me on the cross bar of his bicycle. That allotment together with the hens my father kept and my mother’s unstinting labour and excellent cooking helped to give us a half decent diet through the war years.
I can’t overestimate the work my mother put in to keep us children clean and well-fed. She was first up every morning to clean out the ashes from the previous day’s fire and to light a new fire to make our tiny living room warm for when we children got up. Initially, she had a decent sized kitchen in which to work. There was only a sink in it with cold running water and a toilet but she did have space to move around. I say initially, because my father suddenly had a brain wave, or perhaps brain storm might be a better description for what he did. He got into his head the idea that it was unhygienic to have a toilet inside a house. He couldn’t move the toilet so, instead, he cut the kitchen down in size until the toilet was outside the kitchen. By that time the kitchen was reduced to about one a third of its original size, but at least the toilet was now outside! What remained of the kitchen, now measured about four feet by ten feet, and had become a tiny kitchenette in which my mother had to do all her food preparation and cleaning. It also meant that in the depths of winter with thick snow on the ground, whenever we needed to go to the toilet, we had to brave freezing conditions; bad enough in the day-time, horrible in the night. As an aside, and as I will explain shortly, since we were not connected to the electricity grid, the toilet was also in complete darkness.
Cooking, of course, was done over an open fire in the living room where a range had been made. There was also a fireplace in our front room, though it was never lit, and fire places in both small bedrooms. Whenever one of us children was unwell, a fire was lit in our bedroom but I don’t believe one was ever lit in my parent’s bedroom.
You might wonder at the cramped conditions in our living room, especially when my mother was cooking our meals because that room was our kitchen, dining room and bathroom, as well as being our playroom. Our main meal of the day was taken at mid-day when my father came home from work and a few years later by us children when we came home from school. In the winter, when night time arrived at five in the afternoon, we usually took a high tea as our last meal of the day at about six p.m. Since only our living room had artificial light, which was provided by a single gas mantle, my mother had to do the washing up in her tiny kitchen in the semi dark as only a little of the gas light filtered in through a window between the living room and the kitchen. As I mentioned earlier, there was no light in the now outside toilet so whenever we needed to relieve ourselves, it was done in complete darkness, unless we left the toilet door slightly ajar.
Because all my experience of life began with the start of the war, what was happening all around me was simply part of what I thought was normal life. Bombings, rationing, cramped conditions and no lights at night were all accepted without complaint. I was never afraid that something awful would happen to any of us but that was probably because nothing awful had actually happened to me or mine. I do, however, recall one incident when I was about four years old. By that time I was very anxious to do something to defeat the evil enemy my country was fighting. But what could a four year old do? Then I had a brain-wave. There were gangs of Italian prisoners of war working on the railway line that ran behind my parents house and I knew the Italians were also fighting against us so, picking up a few stones, I began throwing stones at them. A few found their mark. Having done my duty, I ran away. Later that same day a policeman arrived at my parents’ front door to tell them what I had done. I received a severe reprimand for my action.
Shortly before my mother gave birth to my brother, Michael. I started school but because Michael was very unwell as a baby, both Maureen and I were farmed out to one or other of my mother’s sisters during and after my mother’s confinement. While Maureen went off to our aunt Sue who lived with her husband, Will and their two children, Gwyneth and Selwyn, in a small town in the Rhondda Valley called Williamstown, I went to stay with our Aunt Lizzie. Aunt Lizzie lived with her husband, Edmund, in a tiny, semi-detached cottage in a small village called Pentyrch, located about seven miles due north of Cardiff and about 1,500 feet above sea level. The Pentyrch cottage was even smaller than my parents’ house. It did have electricity, however, and I have a vivid memory of putting my tiny fingers into the electric slot on my aunt’s iron when it was plugged in and receiving a severe electric shock. My aunt was more upset by the incident than I was. I realize now it was because I so easily could have been killed. The cottage might have had electricity, but there was no running water in it. A standing pipe stood in the back yard of the cottage to provide fresh water but it regularly froze solid in the winter. I remember having a really wonderful summer holiday there, wandering with my uncle through the nearby wood to collect hazel nuts and generally enjoying the countryside. While I was staying with my aunt and uncle, their daughter, Jenny, who was twenty years older that I was, had been and still was regularly staying in my parents’ house. She was a WREN and had been posted to a position somewhere in Cardiff so it suited her to stay with us during the week. At this time, including my new brother, there were six people staying in the house.
We hear a lot about baby boxes but there was no such thing when I was small. All three of us small children spent our days as babies in a small drawer that was no more than 18 inches wide ten inches deep. It was cosily warm because it was located next to the hearth. It was also safe and was in the heart of the family.
Another occasion when Michael was unwell once again, I remember Maureen and I going to stay with our Aunt Sue in Williamstown where we also attended the local school. I only have two memories of that visit. The first one was of teasing one of the many sheep that wandered across and through the mountains and local towns. It didn’t like being teased and chased me all the way back to my Aunt Sue’s house, much to the mirth of the locals. My other memory is going to collect whim berries high up on the local mountain. We were each given a collection dish and after being shown what the look for, we each went our separate ways. The others were finding it hard to locate the berries but I spotted them all over the place and soon had a full dish. When I proudly took them back to show to my aunt, she burst out laughing. My dish was full of small, round, sheep and rabbit droppings. My biggest concern was whether or not I had sampled any of them.
Another thing we children used to do was collect shrapnel (bomb fragments) while on our way to school each day. It was just a silly little competition to see who could bring in the largest fragments from the many bombs that had fallen in the night. I cannot recall when the German air raids stopped but it must have been well into 1944 or even 1945 because I remember taking fragments of shrapnel into St Albans School, where I attended from about age six until I passed the eleven plus exam, four years later. I regularly walked passed bombed out and still-smouldering houses and shops on my way to school but this was what we did.
One horrific incident I heard about but did not witness was when a boy further along our street, whose name I still remember clearly, told me that his father had just died while working in the local steel works. Apparently, he had fallen into a vat of molten steel. It made a huge impression on me, and still does. I can still clearly see that father coming home on his bicycle each day for his lunch, as my father did.
Shortly before my brother was born, I began attending school. I was four years old and after the first couple of days, when my mother took me, my big sister took me. She was five and a half years old going on sixteen at the time. I enjoyed school and did well. Indeed, so well did I progress, by the time I was six, much to Maureen’s chagrin, I was in the same class as her, a feeling I can well understand and sympathize with. That was when she decided she had to transfer to the nearby Roman Catholic primary school. Even though my paternal grandmother was a fervent Roman Catholic, my sister never showed much interest in the Roman Catholic religion so perhaps there was an ulterior motive for the change. If my sister was transferred, naturally I had to be transferred as well and, equally naturally, the proper order of class and age was once more respected.
Those four years at St Albans were probably the most miserable years of my entire life. For a start, I was the only new pupil in my year for the four years I was in St Albans and I looked very different from the other boys. Pupils in my previous school were used to me; I had grown up with them and I even had a certain “street cred” with them. My classmates in St Albans only saw a studious little boy with a huge mass of tight curly hair that defied brush or comb. Because my mother loved my curls, I was probably the first white boy with an Afro hair style in Cardiff. I looked very different from the other boys and I was bullied and teased unmercifully. All I could do was tuck my chin in and do my best to ignore the teasing for the four years I was there.
I can never recall seeing a baby pram while I was a small child although they must have been about because I can remember seeing the wheels and chassis of discarded prams being used to make pavement carts that children used as a form of sporting transport. Instead, mothers carried their babies and toddlers slung about one of their hips and held in position with a large blanket that was wrapped tightly around both the mother and the child. You still see this in Africa today. That was how my mother carried Michael and, I assume, that was how she carried my sister Maureen and me about.
There was little traffic in my part of town and what there was, was usually horse drawn so there was always plenty of time to get out of the way. One horse-drawn cart that was unmissable as well as unforgettable was the brewer’s dray. This was pulled by six huge, magnificent, grey shire horses. Together with the sound of their hooves on the road and all the jingling brass ornamentation they wore, they could be heard even if we were indoors at the time. Naturally, we all went running out to see the way the driver handled so many massive horses. It really was a special sight.
I think the first motorised traffic I saw was an American Jeep followed by two large lorries full of soldiers. A well as fighting the Germans, the American soldiers were on a peace mission to Britain. It soon became obvious to everyone that even the most junior American soldier had a uniform that was better made and better fitting than the uniforms of even senior British officers. They were also better fed and had access to all sorts of luxury goods such a nylons for the ladies and sweets for us children. They enjoyed watching us scrambling for the sweets and chewing gum they threw for us. The big boys always got the lions share, of course. Americans became a regular sight but where they came from and where they were going was a mystery.
I learned to ride a bicycle around this time. As I mentioned earlier, my father always came home for his lunch/dinner at midday and he used to leave his bicycle out in front of our house. Those were the days when you could do that and be sure it would still be there when you returned for it. Wanting to be able to ride a bike, but not having my own miniature bike on which to practice, I used to borrow my father’s, without his permission! Whether he knew what I was doing I never did find out but I was always given sufficient time to practice. The bicycle was far too big for me, of course, so I improvised. I would lean the bike over at an acute angle and put my leg through the triangle of metal tubes above the gear wheel and pedals. Then, at the same acute angle, I rode along the road. I must have looked a bit like the time James Bond drove his car on two wheels through a narrow gap.
I was seven years old at the end of the war, a war that had gone on for six of those years. I remember one night being in bed when the air-raid warning sounded out. This was not at all unusual but we hadn’t heard the air raid siren sounding for some months and Maureen, who was sharing the bedroom with me, was frightened by the noise but I hastened to reassure her. ‘That’s telling us the war is over,’ I said. A few minute later, our mother burst into the room with the exact same news she had just heard on the radio. We all dressed again and went out to join our neighbours who were singing and dancing in the street outside. Someone had the idea of starting a bonfire and everyone contributed wood, cardboard and paper. It was a great evening and, indeed, in the next few years that followed, we always held a street party and burned a bonfire on the anniversary of VE Day. The bonfires were eventually stopped by the authorities because of the damage they did to the roads. But the parties continued for a few more years. That period of my life was dramatic and full of incident but for me, as a small child shielded from the full horror of what was going on, it was a happy time. Ours was a truly happy house and we regularly entertained one or other of my father’s brothers or sisters as they travelled to and from their houses to our grandmother’s house that was just a few streets away. Interestingly, and it is something that has only just occurred to me. Close as was our grandmother’s house to ours, and though she wasn’t an invalid, I don’t think she ever visited us even though we visited her a few times every week. As I mentioned earlier, my grandfather on my father’s side had died years earlier as had both my mother’s parents. Despite my happy, carefree existence, those were brutal, hard days for everyone, especially the poor.


Bernard Gallivan
September 2018.