Linda told her story on the BBC Wales Bus. The following is a transcription based on the interview.

I was born in Birchgrove and I grew up in Birchgrove and worked in Swansea. I worked in Lewis Lewis Department Store and it was during this time Swansea was blitzed.
We'd get up in the morning and get our gas masks - if we didn't have them, we'd have to go back for them.

Vanishing Buildings
During those three nights of the blitz I remember quite vividly we had to get the bus in the morning, (hoping it would turn up in the first place), and even though Lewis Lewis was in the high street we never knew which route the bus would take to get there - it seemed to be different every day.We'd go so far and the road would be closed because of an exploded bomb.
Buildings which were there today would have vanished tomorrow.

Something that sticks in my mind is that in Lewis Lewis - we must have been up about on the third or fourth floor, we could open a window in this workroom - there was a barrage balloon over Swansea docks and we'd look out at this balloon.
This particular afternoon we were looking out, and there was a plane circulating. We watched it go round a couple of times and then start gunning the docks. That afternoon they were about three men killed on the docks and there was a man, he was from Birchgrove, I think his name was Mr Fry, was killed in the oil works in Llandarcy. And we were standing there in the daylight, just watching looking at this plane circulating around - that is what sticks in my memory.

The stockroom in Lewis Lewis was in the basement - and when we went to clear it out, the siren went, that was the first time the siren went during the day. Of course at that time we were all in our teens and frightened, we didn't think we would come out of there alive, we thought we would be bombed.

In Birchgrove, every night, we'd have to go to the air raid shelter. Our fathers, our friends next door were in with us, our fathers could be patrolling in Smith Road in Birchgrove. One night we were there, there was a terrific sound, and I thought there's a bomb fallen on us but what had happened was they'd fired the guns at Heol Las, which was a few hundred yards down from where we lived.
That always sticks in my mind. We were frightened.

Wartime Work
After that it was a case of either going to work in the ammunitions factory or been called up to the forces. I didn't particularly want to go to the ammunitions work (we used to see them in the morning coming home from Bridgend with yellow, orangey faces) so I went to serve in the Wrens.
I went up to Scotland at first but later on was posted to Pembroke Dock, to HMS Skirmisher. That's where I spent the last couple of years of the war.

I was in Milford Haven on the evening of VJ celebrations which was great.
Through it all we made good friends, everybody was looking out of each other and of course it was very sad for lots of families. There were young men who we knew who were the same age as us being called up, shot at and on occasion killed, which was very sad.
I suppose that these are memories which stick by you through your life really when you start looking back.

Linda Sharpe

More WW2 stories from Clydach