Cardiff remembered: Cartoonist ridiculed Hitler in wartime Echo

Firemen tackle blazing ruins at Llanblethian Gardens,Cathays, Cardiff. Image: Media Wales.

Written by Brian Lee

In 2004 my literary friend the late Western Mail & Echo journalist John O’Sullivan wrote a fascinating book When Wales Went To War (Sutton Publishing £12.50).

And in the chapter titled “Cardiff under attack” we learn that: “Cardiff suffered its first fatal casualties on July 9 1940, when a lone bomber swooped over the docks and landed a direct hit on a ship carrying timber.”

The bomb exploded in the hold of the San Felipe and seven men were killed.

The hero of the hour was Tim O’Brien a “burly docker of David Street” who we are told went into the bomb-damaged and smoke-filled hold on several occasions to rescue the men.

John also told the sad story of the night of April 30, 1941, when Nazi bombers believed to have been using a new type of parachute mine bombed the Cathays and Riverside areas.

The Palmer family who lived at 19 Wyeverne Road in Cathays, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Palmer and their eight children, were all sadly killed when a parachute mine fell in their back garden.

We lived in Thesiger Street which was more or less at the back of Wyeverne Road and, although I cannot remember that sad occasion – I was just five years old at the time – I can recall my mother wrapping me up in a blanket and carrying me downstairs to the Anderson air-raid shelter at the bottom of our garden.

With my father in the army, my mother, sister Valerie and me, would listen to the sound of the planes overhead until the “all clear” was sounded.

Memories of that dank air-raid shelter will always stay with me, and I recall on one occasion finding an incendiary bomb in the garden.

I also remember my mother telling me not to pick up anything off the pavements and roads on my way to school for fear of them being so-called butterfly bombs.

There is a picture in John’s book of firemen in Llanbleddian Gardens not far from where we lived and where 12 residents were killed in April 1941.

I remember playing on the bombed site in this area and also on the bombed site of the New Ely pub in Coburn Street.

I recall there used to be a war memorial plaque on the wall in the New Ely, and would be pleased to hear from anyone who can tell me what happened to it.

Also recalled in John’s book is the former South Wales Echo’s cartoonist JC Walker who had fought in the First World War and whose Echo cartoons had “reduced Hitler and Mussolini to figures of fun.”

Some of his cartoons published the time that Italy invaded Abyssinia in 1935 so infuriated the Italians that their consul in Cardiff called on the Lord Mayor and demanded that JC Walker should be put in jail or even shot for insulting Mussolini.

The Lord Mayor soon sent him packing, reminding him that Britain was still a free country with a free press.

• Please send your pictures and stories to Brian Lee, Cardiff Remember, South Wales Echo, Six Park Street, Cardiff, CF10 1XR
• or email brianlee4@virginmedia.com
• If sending a letter, please include your phone number.

Get all the latest news, updates, things to do and more from Cardiff's dedicated InYourArea feed