The victims and survivors of a wartime tragedy that changed the face of Swansea forever are being remembered in a special exhibition next week.
A month of remembrance events and exhibitions are taking place across the city to commemorate the Swansea Blitz of February 19, 20 and 21, 1941, which claimed the lives of 230 people and left more than 400 injured.
And from Tuesday there will be a special archives exhibition including writings about the Blitz by a forgotten amateur Swansea poet, Wilhelmina Griffiths and words taken from the diary of a man tainted by his experiences of those terrible days.
Local man Laurie Latchford’s wartime diary starts in January 1940. Kept with regularity every few days, it ends very abruptly with his entry for February 23, 1941, parts of which are reproduced in the exhibition.
The very last words of the diary are: “I reached home with fatigue making a hole in my stomach, dirty, smelling of smoke and covered with grey dust. I felt unclean as though I had been privy to something grossly evil.”
Mrs Griffiths published her book of verse in 1943, ‘Poems between Blitzes’ using her maiden name of Johnson-Dailey and the Archives holds the only copy of her book in any public institution in Wales.
As a volunteer first-aider, just like the air raid wardens, she was in the thick of the action.
The exhibition by the West Glamorgan Archive Service – ‘Swansea and the Blitz…70 years on‘ – opens to the public on February 8 and runs until March 7.
It includes descriptions of the Blitz and its effects from air raid wardens stationed across the town and the testimony of a government investigator sent to assess the morale of the population in the immediate aftermath of the bombing.
The air-raids of 1941 saw 1,273 high explosive bombs and 56,000 incendiary devices ravage the town centre as part of Hitler’s plan to bomb Britain into submission.
The Blitz destroyed more than 850 properties and damaged 11,000 buildings as many of the town’s iconic buildings were left in ruins.
Kim Collis, County Archivist, said: “Diary accounts, photographs and poetry tell the story of those eventful days in February 1941. I was particularly pleased to unearth the book of poems by Wilhelmina, since it is comparatively rare to come across women’s writing from the period with such a strong sense of the immediate experience of war.”
“I hope this exhibition will provide a fresh angle for everyone of all ages, no matter how familiar they are with the subject of the Blitz.”
Full details of events will be posted as they are finalised on: www.swansea.gov.uk/swanseablitz
