Childhood memories of WWII in Aberystwyth

Pat Marise James was born at home in South Road, Aberystwyth, on 4th November 1934.  Pat’s mother was English and her father was Welsh, so she grew up speaking English and at home.  The family owned a grocers shop in South Road, Ellesmere Stores (they were the second owners, the first being three Evans sisters, now Lotus Electronics.)  Her mother worked in the shop from 1933 right up until the 1970s, when her parents retired and went on a round the world trip Pat was an only child and said she was very spoilt.

During WWII, her father was stationed at Aberporth and drove the lorries that transported rockets for testing at Ynys Las. The lorry used to stop of at her parent’s shop and the soldiers would have a cup of tea on the way. Her father was an electrician and before the war had worked in Malaya with his brother, ‘Uncle Llew,’ but both returned to Britain before war broke out. Pat’s parents at one time though about emigrating to New Zealand but her gran, who died before Pat was born, bought them the shop ‘to make them stay.’

Pat remembers seeing rows of jam jars outside the shop, left by people to be filled with foodstuff s like jam and pickled onions.  She said there was a local black market in Aberystwyth and in the summer, farmers would bring vegetables to the shop, carrots, peas, in in the winter, broad beans and swedes, and even meat, when they’d killed a pig or a lamb. In return her mother would give them things like sugar and butter.  So it was a sort of exchange of whatever you had. Pat would sit on the stairs and watch local shopkeepers come to ‘James the Grocers’ and no money would change hands.  Pat’s uncle Dick ran Clarks shoe shop and he would give shoes in exchange for sugar.  All the shopkeepers were known by the shops they kept – James the Bara, Tommy Swan the Butcher, etc.   People had to be registered to a shop and buy the appropriate goods there – ie, if someone was registered to buy groceries from Pat’s mother’s shop, they couldn’t go elsewhere to buy them.

Pat never remembers going without and although there was rationing, they had plenty of food, eggs and bacon.  She still has her ID card, and her gasmask, made of rubber and tin, hung in the garage for years after the war.  She thinks she had to collect this mask from a house that was being used as some sort of war office in Bridge Street, next to the Black inn, and was shown how to put it on there too.  At the beginning of the war at least, she thinks she took this mask to school with her, but thinks this precaution didn’t last for long. She went to the local Board School, still standing in Alexandra Road. The boys’ school was at one end, the mixed infants in the other, and the girls’ at the other end. 

 

Pat's ID card cover

 

ID card interior pages

 
In double summer time, when it was still light at midnight, she remembers they’d all go to South Prom and watch the German bombers flying past on the way to bomb Liverpool. Her dad used to say that if they decided to drop a bomb on Aberystwyth, they’d have ‘had it.’ She remembers there was an air raid shelter on a patch of green behind the castle and the Old College but doesn’t think she ever went there during an actual air raid but they had to go there to practice, because she remembers there were wooden laths to sit on. After the war, her father had these and turned them into shelves in the shop.

After Dunkirk, many soldiers were stationed in Aberystwyth and, until a proper canteen was provided for them in the drill hall, they used to come around to the local shops with their billycans. Pat remembers sitting on the stairs and watching them coming to the side door of her parents shop and having cawl, and five Woodbines or Weights cigarettes. The neighbours also helped to make cawl for the soldiers.  They soldiers didn’t pay for any of this, Pat said, and all the shopkeepers in the town gave food and cigarettes for free to help out. 

South Marine Terrace housed army soldiers rescued from Dunkirk, while RAF personnel were billeted on Marine Terrace. Pat remembers lots of American soldiers in the town too but didn’t know where they were stationed.  All the children used to ask them for bubble gum and they always got some.  One of Pat’s friends, Myfanwy Hughes, whose parents ran a fish and chip shop, married a ‘Yank’ and later emigrated to the US.

On VE day, Pat remembers they all went to the King’s Hall and the whole town turned out to celebrate. Boys rolled up newspapers, set them alight, and kicked them around on the beach. 

 

Pat, on left marked with a x, at South Road VE party, 1946. Next to her is Brenda Jenkins

She said the war didn’t really register with her, she was too young to know what it was all about, and they all got on with their lives. Aberystwyth was a small town and many, like her family, were in business and they just carried on.  Some things she remembers clearly, eg, not being able to sleep at midnight because it was too light and the lack of street or car lights.  Her mother had some proper blackout material which were used as curtains and Pat still has these. 

 

Pat's mother's blackout material

 
She remembers that there was a War Office in Queen’s road where her parents had to collect their ration coupons for the food allocated to the shop.  Children used to get a monthly allocation of a ¼ pound of sweets but Pat pinched strips off the coupons of her school friends and was getting ¼ pound of sweets a week from Payne’s sweet shop in Llanbadarn Road, until the shopkeeper went to her father and asked if he was giving her sweet coupons!  Her father cut her sweet rations as a punishment.

Pat’s uncle Aeron fought in Tripoli and survived the war, later becoming head of the National Insurance Office in Aberystwyth.  Her mother’s brother Will was in the navy and he later became a coastguard in the town.  Pat and her daughter Marise also served in the coastguards later on, in the 1970s. They would watch for boats in trouble, Pat from her home and Marise from the castle, and phone the lifeboat if there was an incident.

Pat remembers there was an incident involved a submarine that had to be towed to safety off Aberystwyth. Her parents must have been involved with rescuing the sailors because later the wife of one of them brought round a bunch of flowers for her mother and a pink covered book for her to say thank you.  This was probably H.M Submarine Universal that got into trouble off Cardigan Bay in February 1946.

Another memory Pat has was of a morning just after the end of the war when the Daily Mirror newspaper arrived, the paper her father took, and her mother hid it right at the top of the shelves in the storeroom. Pat had been sent outside but she saw her mother doing this and later got the ladder and went up to look at the newspaper. It had the story of the liberation of Belsen Concentration Camp, which was why her mother had tried to hide it from Pat. This incident was just after the war.  Her parents never talked about the war in the front of her.

In 1959, after she’d married her husband, Philip, Pat’s parents bought them a house, 2 South Marine Terrace. A Mr and Mrs Owen had lived there and were registered to her parent’s shop, and when they moved, they asked them if they wanted to buy No 2. When Pat moved in, they found army officers had written (graffiti) on all the available walls upstairs. Unfortunately, with hindsight, she said, it was all decorated over and lost due to modernisation.  She thinks numbers 1 and 3 also billeted officers. Pat wanted to run a guest house and that’s what No. 2 became and her husband, who’d completed his two years National Service, became a painter and decorator. 

Blog by Kate Sullivan based on a telephone interview with Pat James in February 2021 

 

The Reminiscences of Tony Bird as an Evacuee in Lampeter 1939 - 1942

Tony Bird was evacuated to Lampeter at the very beginning of 1940, when he was 16 years old. He was born in Cowbridge but at the time of the outbreak of  the Second World War he was a pupil at Wycliffe College, a boarding school in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire.  The premises of Wycliffe College  were chosen as suitable for the relocation of the Air Ministry which needed to be moved out of London to avoid the danger of bombing. The decision was made late in 1939 to move the whole of Wycliffe College to St David’s College in Lampeter.

St David's College building

As Tony was already used to living away from home at his boarding school, the idea of evacuation did not come as much of a shock to him, as it must have done to the many children who were accustomed to living at home. Tony was one of three children in his family, but his brother and sister being older than him were not involved in evacuation plans. His parents, used to his being away from home in term time, were not too concerned about the change of location.

It was Tony’s father who took him to Lampeter for the first time for the start of term in 1940.  They travelled by car, and no doubt in those days his father would have had a problem getting petrol for a  fairly lengthy journey. Tony remembers that his father, unfamiliar with the local roads in Wales, went too fast over a hump backed bridge  -  he thinks it was probably at Pumpsaint - and Tony sitting at the back was thrown up and hit his head hard on the roof of the car.

Tony’s first impressions of the rooms in St Davids College were that they were spartan. Two boys shared each little study  room. The winter of 1940 was exceptionally severe and the communal bathrooms in particular were bitterly cold, the boys sometimes having to unfreeze the taps in order to get water to wash. One positive memory of that winter though was that the boys were able to go skating. A lake on the outskirts of Lampeter froze over for about six weeks and it seems that an enterprising iron-monger’s shop in Lampeter was able to get a supply of skates for people to buy.

The adjustment to living in a new place was not difficult for Tony, as the entire school had been brought to Lampeter, including all the staff, their wives and children, and lessons continued exactly as they had been before. He describes the experience as the school  having  been “ transplanted”. There was very little mixing with local people, the school being quite self contained, for example, the college did its own catering. Food was very basic and filling, a typical staple being macaroni cheese.  Tony does not recall any particular contact with the Welsh language but remembers encountering more spoken Welsh on visits to Carmarthen than in Lampeter.

The headmaster W.H. Sibley was quite a free thinker and the boys seem to have had some freedom, for example, film shows were held in the school from time to time and pupils could invite a guest. Tony has amusing memories of inviting a girl called Gwyneth to these evenings.

The  way in which more regular contact did occur with others in the local area was through sporting events, especially rugby and cricket matches, when Tony’s school teams would travel to places such as Carmarthen or Brecon. He remembers rugby matches against the theology students who had had to move out of their accommodation so that Wycliffe College could take it over.  Apparently the students were quite a rough bunch as rugby players, being older than the school boys, but in spite of that  the young ones did achieve one or two notable victories over them. A talented school friend of Tony’s called Gilbert Parkhouse later became  a well known sportsman who played cricket  for Glamorgan and in seven test matches for England in the 1950s.

Tony recalls a few surprising escapades that he was involved in whilst in Lampeter - all of  which were strictly against school rules. On one occasion he decided with friends to hitchhike to Tenby. They reached Tenby without a problem but on the way back they got stuck at Haverfordwest and had to start  walking back to Lampeter. Fortunately before long they did manage to find another lift and arrived back in school by 6pm, just before  the deadline which saved them from possibly getting expelled. Occasionally the older boys manage to sneak out to the local pub and get themselves half a pint of beer, but it was limited to one half pint!

Perhaps more extraordinary was that Tony with a small group of friends started up a strictly secret shooting club. He had brought his own shotgun from home and the boys went out to shoot rabbits. The local farmers were appreciative of their efforts, especially as they were given the rabbits to eat. A close shave occurred one day when  Tony unexpectedly bumped into the  headmaster just as he was crossing the quadrangle on his way to go hunting. His gun was carefully concealed under his clothes - the barrel in his trouser leg and the stock under his jacket - but he managed to continue on his way after a brief chat without arousing the headmaster’s suspicions.

Whilst in Lampeter Tony said that the boys kept up with war news over the radio but in their daily lives they felt largely undisturbed by the war. He commented that Lampeter seemed not to know there was a war on. An example of this was that items were on sale in the stores in the town that were not readily available elsewhere, such as salad cream and tinned tomato sauce. His mother would sometimes ask him to bring some items home with him which he could get in Lampeter but which she could not obtain in South Wales.

Tony left Lampeter in March 1942 and went straight into the Navy. At that time, service recruiters  travelled round  public schools to encourage boys to enlist. By April 1942, a month after leaving school, Tony was in the Navy - something that he had always wanted to do - and sent to a training school in Plymouth. Three months later he was on an E class destroyer called HMS Escapade beginning what was to be a long and distinguished career in the Royal Navy both during the war and for many years afterwards. Of particular note was Tony’s service on HMS Clematis, a flower class corvette on D Day and on a Landing Ship Tank in the Far East after the surrender of Germany in 1945.

Tony and his sister, Joan

Blog by Frances Foley, based on telephone interviews held with Tony during February 2021

Photographs reproduced from the Freshwater East Volunteer Group News magazine, March 2021