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This story was submitted to the People's War Website by Chloe Broadley of the CSV 麻豆官网首页入口 Coventry and Warwickshire Action Desk on behalf of Dr. Raymond Filby and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

A particular memory I hold from the Second World War is almost my earliest memory becaus the event occured when I was only three years old.
Before he was transferred to provide technical training for the RAF at the John Cass Institute in London, my father was a school teacher. At the outbreak of war, his school was evacuated to Pont-y-Clun in South Wales and in 1940, my mother sister and I moved down to a home in Pont-y-Clun near the school where my father would be working for a year.
At some time when we were down there, the family went to Cardiff for the day and while my mother looked after my sister, my father took me to a shop where he was buying stationery. When we left the shop, I declined to hold my father's hand. I preferred to walk independently next to him. After a while, the man I was walking next to went to cross the road and I realised that this was not my father! The man was quite oblivious to the presence of a very small child near him. He proceeded to cross the road. I looked round to see where my father was but there no sign of him. I then just carried on walking down the street, taking in the sights and looking in shop windows. After so long, my memory of what I saw is vague. I was impressed by a large building with a dome but I cannot say now what that building might have been. I have not returned to Cardiff for over sixty years but earlier thus year, my wife and I and some friends spent a few days there to mark the ocasion that my wife and some of our friends were celebrating joint sixtieth birthdays. Of course, Cardiff has changed out of all recognition to the city it was in the early days of the war but I think I identified the domed building which had impressed as a youngster.
After continuing to walk down this street in Cardiff, a woman came up to me as I was looking in a shop window and said she would take me back to my father. We retraced the steps I must have taken from the stationers where my father had made his purchases. When we returned to the stationers, I seem to have been expected. I was given a seat and after a short while, my very relieved father came to collect me. It appears that he did not tell my mother what had happened until some time later.
I later found out that during the time I had been wandering around Cardiff, ther had been an air raid, but as a three year old, I had been oblivious of this and its implications. The streets had never been completely deserted. It amazes me that a three year old was able to wander alone aound a city like Cardiff for so long without attracting anyone's attention.

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