Wales How We Won the War

September 3rd, 1939, and families all over the country

flock to their radios...

'I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received

'and that consequently this country is at war with Germany...'

In that brief moment, life in our country changed for ever.

World War II had begun, but victory wouldn't be assured

by military might alone.

The Blitz, evacuation, rationing, the loss of loved ones -

the war on the home front meant that everyone had to do their bit.

From the country's women who took on everything, farming,

factory work, even flying Spitfires,

to the nation's auxiliary firemen

who worked through the terror of countless air raids.

This is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

This is How We Won The War.

Today, I'm crossing over the River Severn into Wales.

This small nation is famed for its striking and rugged landscape

and the warm welcome it affords visitors,

but there's more to Wales than meets the eye.

On today's programme, I'll be discovering how women of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force

took control of the barrage balloons protecting the skies above Cardiff...

It was a rough, tough life for a woman.

..taking a London evacuee back to the home

that kept him safe throughout the war...

We went through that door, and that became, from that minute, home.

..and exploring the site of one of the war's most daring escapes.

The British guards, guarding this very camp,

gave the prisoners, the escaped prisoners, a push start.

Wales did more than its fair share during the war.

Its coal fields kept industry and transport running.

Personalities like Dylan Thomas got involved in the propaganda battle.

It's even thought that the Welsh language was used

to encode secret messages and fool the enemy.

Wartime Wales was full of secrets and surprises.

'Defending a city the size of Cardiff would prove difficult,

'but one solution was the use of barrage balloons.

'By 1940, there were some 1400

'that had been deployed at strategic sites up and down the country

'Here in Cardiff, they proved to be an important part of the city's air defences.'

-I'm looking forward to seeing the view up here, Peter.

-It's fantastic.

'Peter Garwood, barrage balloon historian,

'has brought me to Cardiff Castle for a birds' eye view of the city.'

Now for anybody not familiar with a barrage balloon,

just describe it, and tell us how they worked.

Right. It's a bag of hydrogen gas, 65 foot long, 25 foot in diameter,

with three big lobes on the back to stabilise it when it was flying,

and then you had a cable which ran from the bottom of the balloon

to a winch on the ground,

and it was then flown up to around 6,000, 7,000 foot.

Longer than two London buses,

the balloons would force the Luftwaffe to fly high in the sky,

taking them into the range of anti-aircraft fire,

and leaving them unable to dive-bomb and drop their payloads accurately.

For a German pilot, the looming inflatables could be lethal.

The cables were equipped with either two parachutes or a parachute and a bomb attached.

Planes would either be dragged out of the sky or blown up.

We had pilots who would deliberately fly into cables

to test out the parachute systems or the parachute with a bomb system,

and even cable cutters. We had pilots who would do that.

I mean, I think they were crazy, but they all survived.

Were there any stationed here within the castle?

Yes. Over here you can have a little look at the castle lawn,

and there's a very famous picture of a balloon on this green here.

Maintaining and launching balloons was originally a man's job.

But after a successful trial, the work was undertaken by members

of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force too.

Hazel Barrow was one of the balloon operators

stationed at Cardiff Castle.

Her father, a Royal Marine, wasn't best pleased

when his daughter chose to join the WAAF

over the Women's Royal Naval Service.

He was so cross. He said "I don't know why you joined the air force".

I said, "I joined because my fiance was in the air force

"and that's why I wanted to go into it.

And I liked the colour of the uniform.

I've got blue eyes and it went with my eyes, you see, so that was it.

I was absolutely elated when I joined.

I didn't know what hard work I was in for.

I didn't know what life on a balloon site was going to be.

It was a rough, tough life for a woman.

Women were split into pairs

to operate the various parts of equipment.

I used to love being in the winch.

I used to love paying out a cable

and sending the balloon up in the air, you know.

The surroundings at the castle were glorious,

but the work was anything but. To stop them flying away,

each balloon was tethered to concrete blocks weighing up to a tonne each.

The work was physically demanding, no two ways about it.

The fact that you were on these for two solid hours,

and the wind was always changing, like it does here, you know,

and you were constantly dragging these blinking concrete blocks.

Manoeuvring the massive inflatables was tough work, and dangerous too.

Quite a lot of ladies injured themselves with balloons

because, imagine, there was a balloon going up on a cable,

there'd be stray rope, catch around your leg,

break your leg, break your arm, take your finger off.

There were a few incidents where the balloon might go up,

and some of the WAAFs were known to have hung on for grim death,

and ended up 20 or 30 foot in the air.

If they fell, they were injured.

The balloon operators faced another peril from the skies.

The sight of balloons would help highlight potential targets for German pilots.

If it just so happened that a balloon popped up out of the clouds,

he would be thinking that, quite potentially, there must be a target down there.

As a consequence, he would jettison his bombs as near as he could.

In May 1943, in the last big air raid on Cardiff Docks,

a bomb would claim the lives of three female balloon operators.

Across the country, brave men and women had put themselves in danger,

wrestling with the balloons day and night to defend our skies.

The psychological effect for the Luftwaffe,

the psychological benefit for the public, seeing these things

flying in the sky around their cities, was incalculable.

Before I joined up, I worked in a large drapery store

and I had no idea that I was going to be able to do this sort of thing.

I was proud of what I did.

'In the roaring cauldrons of the Swansea valley,

'in the stamp and clutter and glare of the black and red works,

'where the fires never go out,

'they fight with blinding, blazing rods and piston rams.'

Dylan Thomas' 1942 script for the film,

Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain may have been propaganda,

but it spoke of the country's industrial strength,

so important to our war effort.

Coal was central to our manufacturing.

We relied on it to produce everything from boats to bombs

to bullets. You name it, demand was enormous.

And here in South Wales, they produced some of the world's best.

I've come to the Big Pit, the National Coal Museum in Blaenavon,

to hear more about one unusual group of conscripts.

They'd help power the nation's war machine, not on the frontlines,

but down the mines. Former miner, Ceri Thompson,

has offered to take me underground.

I mean, it's impossible to overstate the importance of coal.

It was highly important in our time,

because warfare was such a mechanised thing.

the shipping, tanks, guns, you know, made of steel.

Everything come from coal originally.

By the summer of 1943, 36,000 men had left the coal industry.

Britain was facing a coal shortage

and more manpower was required, fast.

Ernie Bevin, Minister of Employment,

he decides that they would take a certain percentage of the conscripts

and put them into the coal mines, not into the armed forces.

Whether you ended up in the forces or the mines was a real lottery.

It's said Bevin's secretary originally picked conscription numbers out of his hat.

Warwick Taylor was 18, and had set his sights on joining the RAF

when his number came up.

Chap at the Ministry of Labour said, "Hard luck, chum,

"you're going in the mines." I said, "Oh, no, I'm not,

"I'm going to the Royal Air Force. Already trained for it.

He said, "You've been balloted to go in the mines."

These people didn't come from the valleys,

they came from places like Hampshire, Essex,

all over the place, you know, never even seen a coal mine.

Named after the Minister of Employment,

over 48,000 Bevin Boys would be recruited between 1943 and 1948.

They were given four weeks' training before being sent down the mines.

Across the country, young lads who'd dreamt of fighting

on the frontlines suddenly found themselves plunging into the darkness of the nation's mines.

If one's going to get a taste of what an inexperienced Bevin boy,

which would probably be someone like me,

would have to get to grips with,

-this is the perfect place to come, isn't it?

-Yeah.

My goodness.

'With the more experienced miners tackling the job

'of actually harvesting the coal,

'most Bevin Boys would carry out the tough work

'of transporting it to the surface.'

A lot of the Bevin boys who came in would have been doing

the labouring jobs, working round the pit bottom area,

the transport systems of the mine.

They'd had to be taught how to stop drams with pieces of wood.

So these drams, these are the carts carrying the coal out?

Yeah. They hold about a ton and a half, two tons.

The wheel is going round there, so if you put it in there,

it comes round there and stops it.

So one of the first things they'd be taught how to do is that.

After a couple of weeks, they'd be throwing them in.

But of course, make a mistake, you'd lose a finger.

It would be a lonely and grim job for the young lads.

But a lot of Bevin boys, of course,

would have been ones or twos in places like this all day.

Perhaps freezing cold or boiling hot,

-according to where they were in the mine.

-Just shovelling?

Shovelling all day. And it'd be damp down here, water down here.

Rats running under your feet. It's not that pleasant a place at all.

After only three weeks working underground,

the dank conditions took their toll on Warwick

when he was struck down with double pneumonia.

By the time I got to Newport Hospital, I was actually unconscious.

Consultant saw me, one million units of penicillin

every eight hours for a week.

And that saved my life. Temperature was 106.7.

I came round and found my parents sitting by my bedside.

But it didn't get me out of the mines.

After three months spent working outdoors as an electrician

at an army gun site, Warwick passed a medical

and was sent back down the mines.

At the time you think, I just want to get out of here, that's it.

You know, I shouldn't be here.

Life threatening illnesses and hard labour

weren't all the army of Bevin boys had to put up with.

A favourite trick down here in Wales was with the pit ponies.

Right, they used to think, we'll have fun and games with these lads.

Get Warwick here and Charlie over there to work with the pit pony.

And we said, "Come on, get up, come on, come on."

Pony wouldn't move.

Course, the miners would be standing back laughing their heads off.

Only understood the commands in Welsh!

But those miners, if you were in trouble underground,

or in danger, they would be there to help you, no question.

The fuel Bevin Boys and miners produced during the war was crucial

in keeping the nation running,

and ensuring our factories could supply our troops.

We feel we did our bit to help the nation at the time. 48,000 of us.

It was absolutely vital. If we hadn't produced that coal, it would have gone under.

They didn't want to do it, they were conscripted, but they did it.

And the majority of them did it very well, and they stuck it out.

-Yeah.

-So I think we can be very proud of them.

Soldiers returning from war would receive medals and heroes' welcomes,

but despite their contribution being just as important,

the boys sent down the mines got nothing.

Many Bevin Boys have mixed feelings about their experiences,

and when you remember that they were forced to do one of the toughest jobs

that wartime Britain had to offer, it's easy to see why.

They often see themselves as forgotten heroes,

but without them and their backbreaking efforts,

there's a very good chance that the nation's industry

would have come to a grinding halt.

From Blaenavon, I'm heading further into South Wales

to a site just outside Bridgend.

On the face of it,

this unremarkable-looking bit of heathland

looks like the sort of thing you'd find anywhere in the country,

but hidden away under the trees and the scrub are the remains

of Britain's most notorious prisoner of war camp.

This was Island Farm.

Local Historian Brett Exton is giving me a guided tour.

It was built in 1938, '39 to house the ammunition factory workers,

then it was used by the Americans prior to D-Day,

and it was in the end of 1944

that it was used to house the low-ranking German prisoners.

It was called Camp 198 at that point.

Prisoners would often be allowed out of the camp on escorted walks,

leading to encounters with locals.

David James' mother told him stories about meeting Island Farm POWs.

They would often stop and break rank

and come into the garden in the front of the house

and tell my mother they had daughters or sons back home,

they didn't know if they were still there or not,

and they would leave sweets and chocolates

in the pram for my sister.

What did the locals make

of having all these enemy prisoners dumped on them?

There was always the threat of invasion into the UK,

so to suddenly have 2,000 prisoners in close proximity

to your home town must have really made it real.

Across the country,

people would find themselves face to face with prisoners of war.

In Monmouthshire, the sight of POWs had a marked impact

on teacher, Mary Collins.

She recorded her thoughts as part of the Mass Observation Project,

an archive of personal writings held at the University of Sussex.

"Saturday Nov 17th, 1944.

"Some 400 German prisoners of war went up through the town.

"They did look a sorry lot in their dreary green-grey uniforms.

"They were all ages. Young, blonde specimens looking about 16

"and stooping men looking more like 60.

"I think the sight of prisoners

"affects me more deeply than any other side of war.

"It offends my very strong love of personal liberty

"and brings home the futility of warfare.

"I said, 'Oh, the dreariness of it all' and one woman said,

"'Oh, but Mrs Collins, I hate them so'.

"She is mothering a son lost on operations

"so I could not tell her that was an unintelligent outlook."

POWs had been arriving at Island Farm since November 1944,

and they'd been busy.

There is this great secret about Island Farm,

and that is, well, the great escape.

The biggest escape from any prisoner of war camp in Great Britain.

Come on, let's have a look inside.

Pretty stark conditions, weren't they, really, for these guys?

It's starting to show the signs of age now,

the plaster's starting to fall off.

On the night of the 10th of March, 1945,

POWs made a daring break for freedom,

crawling through a tunnel they'd dug.

Because of a rare bat colony,

we can't access the actual room where the tunnel started,

so Brett's taken me to one which has the same layout.

And wasn't there a big picture on the wall?

Yeah, there's a lady. It's obviously been drawn by one of the prisoners.

It's a distraction picture, it is.

So the guards would come in and look up...

Yeah, some scantily-clad lady in the room,

probably wouldn't pay much attention to the floor.

As another distraction,

the prisoners would throw paper aeroplanes out their windows.

Guards, worried they contained messages,

would spend hours searching for them,

only to find in most cases that they were blank.

With loud singing covering the noise of covert digging,

slowly, but surely, the tunnel was taking shape.

But what did they do with all the soil?

Well, that's very ingenious because when they arrived at the camp,

they found materials still left over.

They must have squirreled away a piece of plasterboard,

and they fastened it on to the end of a wall that already existed,

extending it by a couple of feet, making a false cavity.

But they didn't have any nails or any screws

so they made up some porridge,

and it must have been one heck of a strong brew of porridge,

because it stood the test of time. The wall didn't actually collapse until the '80s,

and then it revealed the secret

of where the soil had been hid all these years.

At 10pm, the escape started.

Well prepared, the prisoners lined the tunnel with old clothes

to stop them getting muddy.

Curry powder was sprinkled around the edge of the perimeter

so guard dogs would be unable to pick up their scent.

Seventy got through the tunnel.

When the seventieth prisoner got out of the tunnel,

he wasn't appropriately dressed, he'd gate-crashed the escape.

He had a white kit bag, so as he exited the tunnel,

one of the guards saw him.

Actually shot him and he received hospital treatment for gunshot wounds in the local hospital.

But at that point, seventy had got out through the tunnel exit.

The prisoners would get help from an unexpected source

when they came across a car like this one

belonging to the local doctor.

They were pushing the car up the road, trying to get it started,

but coming down the other way was some guards,

coming back to this very camp, spotted them in trouble,

but mistook them for Norwegians, so they said to the Germans,

"If you get in the car, we'll give you a bump start",

so the British guards who were guarding this very camp,

gave the prisoners, the escaped prisoners, a push start.

The town was on high alert as the prisoners scrambled to freedom,

but not everyone was in a hurry to help track them down.

The Home Guard Sergeant rushed down to me and he said,

"Ivor, get your uniform on." I said, "What's the matter, Dai?",

"Oh, the prisoners of war have busted out."

And I said to him, "I couldn't care two hoots if the bloody whole German army was out,

"I'm going up Langerworth for a walk." But I said,

"I'll tell you what I'll do, if I find them, I'll let you know".

Which incidentally is exactly what happened!

And how long were they on the run for?

All were recaptured in a week.

Obviously some were captured within a couple of hours,

some within a couple of days, but the last were within the week.

In November 1945, Camp 198 became Special Camp 11.

It would hold some of the leading members of the Wehrmacht,

Germany's armed forces, who would later stand trial at Nuremberg.

Today, the buildings lie derelict,

with little trace of their exciting and dramatic past.

Prior to the outbreak of war, a different kind of escape plan

was being drawn up, one which would save young lives.

With predictions of four million civilian deaths in London alone,

the Government came up with Operation Pied Piper,

a plan to evacuate around 3.5 million children to the countryside.

James Roffey was eight years old and living in London, when,

in 1939, he and his sister, Jean, brought letters home from school

to inform their parents they'd be leaving them to live with strangers.

My father, he'd been a soldier in the First World War.

He opened the letters and I remember clearly his words were,

"They told us we were fighting the wars to end all wars,

"but it's all starting again. They'll have to go."

On the 31st of August, 1939,

the order to start the evacuation was given.

In train stations across the country,

tiny hands clutched small suitcases

as children prepared to leave their mums and dads.

Strict rules were laid down as to what children could take with them,

one being a ban on hand-held toys.

Although iconic images show children with soft toys and dollies

crammed into train carriages, the reality was different.

They were all provided by the newspaper reporters.

They would hand the toys up to the children,

"Now hold these while I take your photograph",

take the photograph, take the doll and the teddy bear away.

Parents were kept in the dark as to where their children were being sent.

The railway staff were under strict orders.

"Do not tell the parents the destination of these evacuee trains."

Just like their parents, London-born eight-year-old, Jim Wright,

and his brother Jack had no idea where they'd arrived

when their train pulled in at a platform.

I always remember Jack, who was two years older than me,

he held my hand and he says, "Where are we?"

I said, "I don't know." Nobody knew. The teachers didn't know.

Then you looked at the view.

The train moved out, and I'd never seen one of them in my life.

-All the hills...

-The biggest mountain I'd ever seen

was the sand dune on Wanstead flats. I'd never seen one of those!

Jim and Jack would later discover they'd arrived

in the village of Llanhilleth, just two of the 110,000 children

evacuated to Wales over the course of the war.

After leaving the station,

the two brothers were taken with other children to Cae Felin Street.

Today, Jim's returned.

Each door was open and it was full of people.

And we started back there.

And we started to come down with the billeting officers

and our teachers, and every so often we would stop,

the billeting officer would either go this side or to that side,

and say to whoever the householder was,

"You're down for a boy or a girl". "Yes." "These are yours".

so they went, and, right, carry on.

So were you scared?

Scared, apprehensive, excited, nervous.

But I had my big brother Jack with me,

so I wasn't too scared, cos I knew he'd...

The instructions from Dad was, "You look after Jim".

And we came, and then, "Halt."

We all stood round like sheep in the pen,

and the billeting officer went over and said "Mrs Carter,

"I believe you're down for one boy".

-In number 16?

-In number 16.

And Jim said, "Yes", and he said,

"Well, I'm sorry, but I've got two brothers".

Without hesitation - "We'll take 'em".

Me, I'm standing here with Jack's arm.

I'm going nowhere without my big brother!

-And the Carters took you in?

-They took us in.

We went through that door and that became, from that minute, home.

Jim was welcomed into the home of Laura and Jim Carter,

and their three children.

The loveliest memory I've got, it was every kid,

as far as Jack and I were concerned, from creation,

all yelling and screaming, "Mrs Carter! Mrs Carter!

"Can they come out to play?!" We'd only just arrived.

-What a welcome.

-Wonderful. We've never forgotten that.

Jim and Jack soon settled into life in the Welsh village.

But a year after arriving,

the two young boys would receive devastating news.

A message was sent from the headmaster to my teacher,

"Could Jim Wright please report to the headmasters office?", so I did.

I hadn't done anything wrong.

And my mum's there, she said, "I want you to come home now."

I said, "All right." So I came home with Jack,

we sat in that room there with Laura, and she'd got some news,

she'd had a telegram saying that Dad had been reported missing.

And no further news was available.

On the following day, the same thing happened, called out of school,

she'd had another telegram saying he'd been killed in action.

That's how we heard it. That was the worst day of evacuation.

You can't get worse than that, no matter who you are or where you are.

As we were filming with Jim, the current homeowner returned,

offering him the chance to step back in time.

Do you want to come in and have a look?

-Would you like to have a look?

-I would.

-Come on, then!

-Yeah? Come on then, let's go!

How about that! In you go.

Oh, good heavens. Oh, my sainted aunt!

Changed a bit?

I sat there, Jack there.

Peter, I'm not sure where he was.

Laura there and Mother there, and Laura had the telegram,

on both days, and that's when we knew, and...

That's, sorry...

'Unknown to Jim, we've laid on a reunion at the village hotel.

'One of the surprise guests is Mr and Mrs Carter's son, Keith,

'who Jim's not seen for more than 15 years.'

-Ah, look at this lot! Come in, Jim!

-Oh, dear!

Here we are ! In you go, Jim.

-Come here...

-Now then, who have we got here?

Oh, my God. This is Keith.

This is my big foster brother.

-This is Keith.

-All right?

Happy families.

It is lovely to see you all together like this,

about to have something of a party, I suspect.

-How does the party start?

-With a song.

-Go on, then!

-No, he's going to sing.

# Forever and ever

# My heart will be true. #

Lovely...brilliant!

Well, during the Blitz on Britain,

1 in 10 of the deaths it caused, it's thought, were children.

Without evacuation and the kindness of strangers of the sort

that we can see here today,

who knows how many more young lives would have been lost?

Next time I'll be down on the farm,

hearing how an army of women kept the nation fed,

discovering how feathered friends kept our airmen safe...

Winkie getting back to Scotland was enough for that crew to be rescued.

..and finding out how entertainers kept troops'

and workers' morale high.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd