By Barbara Morgan from Aberystwyth:
"The first time we heard the air raid siren it was September the 3rd 1939. I was 9 years old and it really struck fear into us three children.
Some time after we'd been put to bed the air raid sirens went. We were taken down and dressed by Mum and Dad. We were three small children and we all paniced like a cold hand had been laid upon us. To us small children I think this feeling had been transferred from the adults.
Mum took us next door to neighbours where we had cups of tea and listened in to the conversation, 'did you hear that plane?', 'is it one of ours?', 'Mrs so and so up the road was so frightened she only just made it to the toilet'.
I remember the faces of the neighbours as they spoke of war and they remembered the last war, queueing for food, ration books, scarcity of food. To us food was always plain and scarce and it wasn't plentiful anyway.
Dad joined the army the RAMC because he said he didn't want to kill anybody so Mum was on her own with us and that memory will always be with me.
We lived at Burton on Trent Staffs and sometimes at night you could see the red in the sky in Coventry and Lichfield and all those places with the bombs."
Read more WW2 stories by Aberystwyth people...
your comments
Sarha Joan Williams.
I would like to fined people that was evacuee from Rockferry Birkenhead,Welllane school in 1938.And were sent by train to north wales,one person i can remember we would go to school together was Audry Matkin.
Sun Dec 21 11:43:13 2008
John Lally...Aber
My step-mum often repeated the story of being grabbed by her mum and taked down to the cellar of their house in London's east end when the sirens went off, warning of an air raid and crying because knitted Panda had been left in the garden. When she found it after the all clear, one of its legs had been blown off by bomb that demolished part of their house. She still got it to this day.
Mon Dec 3 08:33:24 2007
John Evans, Birkenhead
Cinemas closed when war started. Not a good idea it seemed then to have people gathering in that way. Air raids did not start until 1940, and shorter lived and light. Odd that cinemas re-opened here in early 1941 just as bombing intensified. You don't stay in cinema, dance hall or pub if you are in dire danger, you take a calculated risk. That means the danger is acceptable. Certainly some areas got battered, but by the time I left these shores in October, 1941, the worst was over, with Hitler turning his attention to Russia in 1942. It must have been boring...well, unless you were at the dance hall.
Tue Nov 27 08:19:22 2007
Remi Williams, Birmingham
I feel for these people how scared they must have been. I'm glad it finished a long time before I was born.
Mon Mar 6 12:53:45 2006
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Barbara Morgan from Llan-y-Creuddyn near Aberystwyth was just nine years old when she heard her first air-raid siren. Here she describes the fear she felt, a memory she'll never forget.
