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On Wednesday the 10th of November my wife, Barbara, and I were meeting two of our six grandchildren from their primary school. When we met them we asked them had they enjoyed their day. The younger of the two said that in one of his lessons his teacher had been talking about World War Two. During our subsequent conversation he mentioned that he had informed his teacher that during the war his Grandpa - that's me - had collected bombs. I realised that during the previous years my six grandchildren - Alyce, Beth and Connor and Sofia, Toni and Gianni - I had told them the story that during the war lots of bombs dropped in the Bagillt area and one in particular I remember.
I was crossing the school field on the 8th of April 1941 and there was a large hole in the field which we hadn't previously seen. The main attraction to us was the amount of clay that was available. During the war we couldn't get marbles or glass alleys as we used to call them. So we had this idea of taking the clay, making them into clay alleys and baking them in our mothers' oven. We hid some of the clay but as we were doing this we heard the school bell ring. We ran across the school field, through a gap in the hedge to the Infants' School at the bottom of the road.
When we arrived at the school all the children were in lines as usual. I was ticked off along with my friend for being late for classes and asked what had kept us, why were we late. I said to the teacher (this was sort of a lie at the time) I said 'Well we were crossing the field, Miss, and we saw a rather large hole which we were a bit frightened of going too close to because we thought it might be a bomb'.
That was my story and I seem to remember getting a ticking off for telling that story. However we went into class. Now during classes in the war, when the whistle blew we had to stand by the side of our desks at the first whistle, when two whistles went we had to proceed to the air raid shelter. On this particular morning we heard the whistle blow, we stood by our desks, the second whistle went, we walked into the school yard, but on this occasion we were met by all our parents who promptly grabbed us by the scruff of the neck and dragged us away from the school. When we were away from the school I asked my mother what was the problem and she said 'There's a bomb hasn't gone off on the Merllyn school field and we have to clear the area'. I then told her 'Well I know where that bomb is, we were playing in it this morning' and I promptly got another clip!
Read more of Terah's wartime stories on the WW2 People's War website.
your comments
Terah Oldfield-Lloyd, Bagillt.
I believe it was around 1997 that I had the opportunity to read some of the school dairies that appertained to the war years. In one of those diaries was an entry dated the 8th April 1941 which read as follows:
'When the school assembled at 9am today, a little boy, who had crossed the Playing-field diagonally from his home, reported that he had seen a hole in the field. It was known that there was an unexploded bomb in the district, but its exact location was unknown. The Headmaster accompanied by another Air Raid Warden (Mr.R.Jones) went along to investigate & both came to the conclusion that it was either a defective bomb, or a delayed action bomb of heavy calibre. The A.R.P Report Centre, & The Education Office were notified by telephone & the Headmaster was ordered to evacuate the school immediately. A bomb disposal squad which commenced operations on Good Friday finally removed the bomb on Easter Sunday, April 13th. The bomb was dropped by enemy aircraft at 12.48 am on Tuesday 8th April in the school Playing field at a distance of 120 yds from the school.'
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