My mother was an Air Raid Warden at Thistleboon by Michael Llewellyn
My Mother, Margaret Llewellyn, became an Air Raid Warden and at the end of the War, was awarded the Defence Medal. Amongst other duties, such as ensuring that the Blackout was not breached, she assisted in manning the ARP Post for Thistleboon, which was situated in the loft of an outbuilding at Craig-y-Môr through the good offices of Mrs Harris (Harris, Craig-y-Môr, as the family was known). The ARP post was equipped with a telephone, stirrup pumps and numerous buckets of sand. At that time, only one house in Thistleboon and Michael's Field that I knew of, had a telephone, so the ARP post was state of the art in terms of communications.
The badge shown in the poster, is the ARP badge in silver issued from 1937. For three years, along with an armband and helmet, it remained the only uniform for most ARP workers
Early ARP recruitment poster
Shortly after the War started, duly exhorted by the Government,
householders set about taking ‘Air Raid Precautions’.
Mother's first uniform was no more than a silver badge and a steel helmet, each bearing the letters ARP (familiar to all who have seen the Warden in Dad's Army) worn with civilian clothes. However, she was later issued with a navy blue battle-dress top with blue slacks and a smart beret. Ladies had a choice of skirt or slacks, and although slacks were considered slightly daring, my Mother wisely chose them, as exercises at venues such as the Convalescent Home at Langland Bay, included being lowered from windows during simulated rescues.
She also had a service gas mask with which I was much impressed, as it had goggles and a snout with a sort of flap affair, which trembled when the wearer breathed, as opposed to a civilian gas mask, which had a large round snout and a plastic eyepiece. I recall that these civilian masks had a second snout taped on after issue, which was supposed to prevent mustard gas or some such noxious vapour. We were required to carry our gas masks with us at all times, and I was once sent home from school because I had forgotten my gas mask.
Whilst incendiary bombs could be smothered with sand and any small fires which they caused could be extinguished with water sprayed from handy stirrup pumps, short of prayer there was not a lot one could do about high explosive bombs, other than to seek to diminish the effects of the blast which they caused on exploding. Household windows were taped, criss-cross, with special tape to prevent the glass flying if they were shattered. A better method was to provide wooden shutters, with a bar to hold them in place, which my Father, Harry Llewellyn, who was invalided home from the First World War, made for our sitting room window. The supports for the shutters were still in place until ‘Umkomaas’ was re-rendered over fifty years later.
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Having taken these precautions, the next step was to provide an air-raid shelter. Anderson Shelters were corrugated-iron bolted together structures, which were dug into the garden in some suitable spot. They were not provided with doors as I recall, but a suitable arrangement to close the entrance could be made. Inside, it was customary to have bunks for the occupants. Earth might be piled on top to give added protection. They were usually cold and damp; indeed, if badly sited they had a tendency to flood. Morrison Shelters were basically an impressive steel table with wire mesh around the sides. They were sited within the house and whilst not exactly elegant, were none the less more attractive than Anderson Shelters and quite useful for domestic purposes. The alternative was to sit under the stairs for the protection afforded and hope for the best. My Dad, a retired builder, built an air-raid shelter beneath the house, with additional joists, a concrete floor, wood panelling and electric light. There were also three bunks acquired from the Blue Funnel ship, which was mined by one of the first magnetic mines and ended up in two halves in the Bay. It was much admired and was used by family, friends and neighbours. The trap-door entrance was beneath the stairs, with an emergency exit at the side of the house. Today (2002) it is still there, although the wooden panelling was stripped out a few years ago. For over nine months, I slept there every night and throughout the War it was a marvellous den for us children.
The nearest air-raid siren was situated in the park opposite the Prince’s Fountain. There are few people of my generation who will not remember the awful whining of the sirens as they wound themselves up to a crescendo and then faded away, only to start over again with a banshee wail. It was a thoroughly chilling sound and, when accompanied by the drone of aircraft engines, the explosive cracks of anti-aircraft guns and the thud of bombs, a nightmare of terrifying noise. The first big raid found us somewhat unprepared. I can remember that the space under the stairs and above the dugout had acquired an accumulation of boots and shoes, toys and other domestic detritus, which had to be removed hurriedly in order to open the trap-door. I was frankly terrified and hurled toys and boots in all directions in my panic to open the trap. My parents were at the back door of our house on the Mumbles Hill, absorbed by the sound of the bombers and the guns and gazing in awe at the sight of Swansea burning across the Bay. With the responsible attitude of an earnest child of eight, I ran to the door to implore them to take shelter, only to join them in looking at Swansea in wonder. To me it seemed like fairyland, lights, explosions, fires and flames everywhere, made doubly dramatic by the fact of the strict blackout, to which we were all accustomed and suddenly here was light, as one had never seen it. The planes droning overhead with searchlights occasionally illuminating them and the four ack-ack guns on the Mumbles Hill banging away for all they were worth, with the house shaking as they fired. The whistling sound which the bombs made as they fell, followed by a crump as they landed, was enough to alert me to the fact that the place in which I needed to be was in the dugout under the stairs. I abandoned my parents and sought shelter.
In a later raid, I was asleep downstairs in our front room. A lone plane dumped its bombs on the Mumbles Hill and the Cliffs. It was Luftwaffe practice to mix incendiaries with the high explosives. One bomb made a large crater in the field where the cricket club now plays and which contained a searchlight battery at about that time, just missing the cottage at the Mare's Pool. Two or three others made craters on the cliffs towards Langland.
Surprisingly, there were no casualties and no serious damage, other than large holes in the ground, although one of Woollacotts' cart horses in an adjacent field was never the same afterwards and bore the name of ‘Shrapnel’ for the rest of its life. When I woke up with the noise, the curtains were not drawn and light from burning incendiaries in the garden and in the road outside, played through the window. I briefly thought that I had passed away and was surrounded by hell-fire— then lots of people with buckets of sand and stirrup pumps restored the situation and the next day my Dad discovered the fin of an incendiary bomb, sticking out of a flower bed in the front garden. It had ignited but smothered itself in the soft earth. I remember that he was very annoyed that it was not completely intact.
I still have that incendiary in the garage in two pieces and, believe me, I was not at all sorry that it was not intact!
'Would you mind paying attention, Mrs. Eglethorpe, please:
I hope you don’t think they enclose directions with the bomb…’
The stirrup pump is clearly illustrated,
and the trainer is in early uniform-badge and armband.
A Langdon cartoon. ( Random House).
Brown, M., Put that light out! Britain’s CD services at war, 1939-45. Sutton Publishing, 1999, p.27
A Mumbles Air Raid Warden, with badge & whistle