Shelter sought from onslaught of the air raid (From Penarth Times)

Shelter sought from onslaught of the air raid

By Patrick Wolahan

THROUGHOUT the war years I lived with my family in number 20 Paget Road and for us kids everything seemed quite normal, until one night in early November 1941 when the war caught up to us.

The siren went off in the evening and we went up to the communal air raid shelter beneath the Ship Hotel.

At the bottom of Lord Street we had an Anderson shelter, but Mum and Dad must have thought it was safer in there.

I remember looking back down the hill, which was steep.

It seemed that the dock and all of Grangetown was on fire.

We could hear the guns going off by the basin and the drone of planes. It lasted, or so it seemed, all night.

In that month a land mine dropped on the dock and damaged our house and we ended up down Westbourne Road.

My father at the time was in the Home Guard on the ack-ack guns. After the war he was given a citation. My brother Billie used to take me around collecting shrapnel and burnt-out incendiary bombs.

A collier was blown-up in the River Ely opposite our house and all the crew were lost.