Bomb raid prompted two weeks off school by ex-Penarthian returned, Mr Patrick Silva (From Penarth Times)

Bomb raid prompted two weeks off school by ex-Penarthian returned, Mr Patrick Silva

I LIVED at 6 Harbour View Road next to the Billy Banks, better known as Solters Field by locals.

I was ten years of age when the war began, an age to experience the excitement but not the worry.

We had a barrage balloon on the Rec and just along the road and in certain weather conditions smoke screen lorries used to park in the road.

For a while we had a searchlight in the corner of the field by Dock Road and a listening device (hydrophone I think) lower down the field.

One night a bomb fell a few hundred yards away in front of St Joseph's School, we had two weeks off in case the building was unsafe.

A platoon of soldiers were then camped for a while in the field opposite the school.

The first raid on Cardiff began at about 6.30am. The weather was fine and I was playing in the road with my brothers, sister and friends while our parents were just chatting.

Then fires began at the Queens Dock and steadily moved along the waterfront to Grangetown and the gasworks. There were a lot of incendiaries on the moors by the River Ely.

Until the night of the raid on Penarth, every house in the road had a piece of masonry shaped like a flower bud above the bay windows.

Ours was hit off by an incendiary which then made a hole in the pavement and rolled into the gutter. I heard the noise and went to investigate. As I opened the front door it exploded.

Fortunately, I was unhurt because it was in the gutter, but the glow was so bright it was several minutes before I could see properly.

I have recently learned that one fell on the roof of the end house and I know there was one in the house behind us. Another went into the soft bank in front of us and did not set off. It was found by a friend, Brian, from Plassey Square.

I pulled it out of the ground and reluctantly gave it to him. It was in pristine condition with a red nose, silver body and bright, open fins.

The mines mentioned in a previous letter by another Patrick were obviously intended to sink the largest ship we had ever had in the dock and was soon due to sail. It was called the Tigre or Tigris, I'm not sure which.

The mine which exploded blew in our downstairs window while we were asleep upstairs.

One afternoon, no warning had sounded but a plane with no markings that I could see flew a low circuit over the town in an anti-clockwise direction before heading for Cardiff and dropping two bombs.

Another day, a bomb fell in the garden of the bottom house in Dingle Road and demolished the wall next to the footpath.

The crater was still steaming when I got there and I managed to pull out a piece of the bomb as big as a dinner plate - not easy because it was to hot to hold.