Emrys Coupe
I can remember my dad telling me a bit about the war but he kept quiet most of the time.
My name is Emrys Coupe. I was born in 1947, so after the War. I can remember my dad telling me a bit about the war but he kept quiet most of the time. He was in the army in France for about four, five years. He got injured and he came home after that. I can remember one thing he had from the War was a German bayonet and he used it to cut sticks.
As I was getting older I was getting worried that he had this German bayonet and had killed soldiers and I asked him when I was eight or nine years old, my dad was English, 'Did you kill anybody during the war?', and it was a stupid question to ask. He turned towards me, and he said, 'That's not a very nice question to ask.' After that I never asked again.
Mam was a maid in Rochdale from when she was about thirteen. They had to go away at that time, no money to look after them, there were ten children. Rochdale is next to Manchester and she can remember blackouts and air raids and sleeping many nights, everyone in the cellar. She worked in the munitions factory making bullets for the War.
Really, when I was a lad, what I remember gave me most happiness was going to see Nan on Saturday morning on my bike and asking her to make potatoes, beans and milk and going to the farm on my bike with two jugs and coming back and having potatoes in milk and jam roly poly and custard from Nan. Good times.
I remember 1957. Elvis Presley and Jailhouse Rock on a vinyl 45 record. That was great fun. Starting to grow up.
One story I heard ... I heard of a bomb in Perargia field and Uncle Ifor, he was in the Home Guard and he was boasting later that he was the only person who was injured by the Germans in Llanfachreth, because when the bomb landed he was shaving and he got such a fright he cut himself so he was boasting that the Germans had taken his blood!
