We had one interesting little experience during the Second World War here in Pembroke Dock; it was in September 1940, when there was an air raid that caused a bit of damage in Gwyther Street. I was at home at the time recovering from an operation I had in Tonbridge and I was staying with my father, here at number 23. On the top of the hill up Pennar way there were some oil storage tanks that had been hit in an earlier raid and were still burning.

The vicar at the church had organised for a number of women to go up to St Patrick's to make tea and sandwiches for the firemen fighting the oil fires and I decided to go and help, so when the car came to collect me I jumped in and went off with them. My father told me not to go but I would not be persuaded and so off I went. I suppose I was a bit headstrong and forthright and there was nothing he could say that would dissuade me.

Later that night there was the raid and the kitchen extension of the house next door, number 21 was hit and demolished. My father was in bed at the time sleeping in the back room and when the bomb struck the whole house rocked. He jumped out of bed and went to the door of the bedroom, but when he opened the door he saw the air was filled with white dust that was so thick that he could not even see the floor. He decided to stay where he was until the dust settled because he did not know whether the landing had collapsed or not. So he went back and sat on the bed for ten minutes while the dust settled.

Another bomb fell on my uncle's house across the road at number 32. On the Saturday morning he had felt that something was not right so he packed up the family and took them off to Solva for the weekend. They booked into the hotel at 1pm on the Saturday and at 1am on the Sunday the house was blown up by a bomb. How's that for a lucky escape?

Anyway, back to me, I was busy all night making sandwiches and tea for the firemen when, at about half past five the vicar comes up to St Patrick's and sees me talking with my cousin and comes and joins us. He did not say anything to me at the time but he announced that as there would be a new shift coming on in an hour that and that he would take us all home.

He put me in the front seat and as the car approached Gwyther Street he stopped it and told me that there had been a bit of trouble in Gwyther Street, but that my father was safe. Gwyther Street was barriered off but they let me through to go to my home. I walked in through the front door and saw that everything was covered with a film of white dust... I called 'Dad' but there was no reply so I went to the foot of the stairs and called again, this time I heard him, he was up stairs in bed. Some weeks earlier he had suffered a heart attack and was not well so he had sensibly gone back to bed.

When I looked in my bedroom, which was at the front of the house, I saw that there was a great lump of masonry on the floor. It had come through the roof and landed on my bed, then bounced on to the floor and broke the leg of the bed and then rolled into the door and cracked a panel of the door. The crack is still there to this day. If I had obeyed my father and stayed at home the lump of masonry would have landed on my chest and crushed me. My father said later that he was glad I had disobeyed him and so am I.

Dolly Waters

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