Gwen Harp
A happy time I remember was during the summer and going on a Sunday School trip to Llandudno or Rhyl. We would look forward to it all year and saving money in the Sunday School savings club.
Gwen Harp is my name and I was born in 1948, three years after the end of the War. When the War broke out Mam was fifteen years old and had started nursing in Stanley Sailors' Hospital in Holyhead. Everyone finished school at fourteen in those days. I remember Mam saying that a bomb landed in the hospital grounds, a big hole in the ground and everyone frightened. Church Hall in Boston Street was demolished along with a row of houses at the side of it.
Then Mam went to work in Worcester in England in a factory making planes, Lancaster Bombers I think. There were lots of young girls there with her from all over the country and she made lots of friends. I remember her telling me a story rationing was going on at that time and you couldn't get stockings and what the girls used to do was paint their legs with gravy browning and put a line down the back with a piece of coal to pretend they had stockings to go out. Everything was rationed from food to clothes at that time and I'm sure there weren't many fat people around at that time.
My Dad was born in 1915. My Dad was a soldier in the Army when he was 24 years old. He was in Southern England on the ack-ack guns (1) shooting at the Germans when they came over to bomb London and other places.
In the village where I lived only one family had a television set and I would go there to watch it after school. One day my sister and I were there with bad colds. The man whose house it was sent us home in case we spread germs. My father lost his temper and sold his car to buy a television set and he had to walk to work to RAF Valley every day until he had enough money to buy another car!
A happy time I remember was during the summer and going on a Sunday School trip to Llandudno or Rhyl. We would look forward to it all year and saving money in the Sunday School savings club.
(1) Ack-ack is 'AA' in the phonetic alphabet used at the time. 'AA' stands for 'Anti-aircraft Artillery'.
