My Cousin Mary’s V.E.Window

 

 

My cousin Mary was born in John Street, Resolven in 1940– too young to remember being carried into the cwtch under the stairs by her mother Elsie during air raids. But thanks to her grandmother Mrs Elizabeth Baker, she found a different way to decorate her front room window in Pontneathvaughan for the V.E Day celebrations.  She used cards and documents found in a box of her grandma’s bric a brac

They included documents like ration books and how to use a gas mask and how to  “shield “ your windows.

 

 

 

 

 

Mary says:

“The picture is of my father’s brother Bernard who was in the airforce right through WW2.  He was our favourite uncle,.  John, Tony and myself were the only grandchildren for years  and as he was living at home whenever he came home on leave the three of us would be down our grandparents waiting for him to come home with presents for us.  When he was de-mobbed from the airforce he went to work in the ‘Pergwm Colliery as a collier, as most people did in those days in the Lamb and he was involved in an explosion and his face and body was peppered with black coal marks, my grandfather’s sister Mary spent hours putting hot flannels on his face and picking the coal dust out with a sterilised needle.  Bernard was so handsome and a lot of women over the years have told me that when he used to come home on leave in his airforce uniform the girls would be “swooning” over him. ”

EDITORS  NOTE

If you have any shoe boxes under the stairs or under the spare bed , why not root them out like Mary did and share your finds with us ?

 

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