Aberfan

We always visit the Memorial garden when we go down there.
We are moving back to Wales in a few weeks, can't wait. Hope all goes well if you do decide to go on Friday.

Aw, my grandfather and g Grandfather were at Senghenydd rescuing the miners, my g grandfather who was a baptist minister also took part in the burial services,

God bless Anniebach.

I am from a mining family myself. Stil have great uncles buried under the pit at Senghenydd.

I hope this meets with the approval of members. I am unsure if I will go home on Friday, depends how brave I feel.

I have arrange for my flowers to be laid and they are given from - mothers and grandmothers of gransnet . I cannot say if they will be laid at the cemetery or the memorial garden.

Hope this doesn't cause upset

So sad for all the families involved. I remember that Friday night so well as a 20 year old watching the news. The programme about the young wives club was so moving. And Annebach, your post was also very moving. Much love and respect to all who lost someone that awful day.

I was 13 when Aberfan happened I remember vividly what I was doing and how we all felt. It is THE major tragedy for Welsh people. I will keep the minutes silence on Friday Annie. If any of you have not seen the memorial for the children it is so beautiful and touching. I can't believe it's 50 years and as one who knows you never get over the death of a child and in such terrible circumstances too.

Thinking of you Anniebach and so many others.
I was in my first year of teaching. Another young teacher from my college,who qualified at the same time, died in that disaster.
I heard, recently,an item on the radio mentioning how, it was suggested, some of the money sent to Aberfan was to be used. Wish I could remember the details.

What a hard time for you Annie both then and now.Thinking and praying for you.

What a hard

I have no words Annie, but I will join you for the minute's silence on Friday.

Dear Anniebach,
Reading your post made it all come alive to me and touched my heart. you are so brave to live through all of it and still have your faith. Your post feels like it taught me lots.

Annieb ?

I was eighteen and had just left school. It affected me as well. It was the worst such totally avoidable disaster in Britain I knew of.

I had been for a drive out up into the valleys from Bristol with my parents a few months before. It shocked me, until then "That sort of thing " did not seem to happen in Britain.
(If you see what I mean.)

I was almost 13 years old and the memory of my parents in tears as they watched the news is etched on my memory.

I'll join you in spirit on Friday Anniebach.

Oh Annie how sad. There are no words.

My daughter was 50 just a few days ago. She was nine days old, I was walking round the living room with her against my shoulder when the news cme on TV of the disaster.

It wasn't all as comes across now, there were suicides, alcoholism , not rampant but it happened , breakdowns, anger and bitterness because it needn't have happened , the water was running from under the tips when my father was a pupil there, when I was a pupil there, the winter before the head was on the front page of the Merthyr Express handing in a letter of complaint , she died that day. Phil eho lost his wife, two sons and home was removed from the chapel when the deaths were being recorded ,he demanded - murdered by the NCB on the death certificates . I think what got the village through was it was a mining village, many of the fathers , grandfathers, uncles worked together in that pit, the police officer photographed carrying s child from the school - my uncle Vic- had been a pupil at that school, the first two nurses at the school were the midwife and district nurses - yes my aunties - they had been pupils at the school . The men you see were fathers and grandfathers digging for their own children, before the day shift got there the mothers had started digging . It was hell . I find this week so difficult ,watching the tv programmes and I see my dad aged 49 digging, I see so many of my family in the film clips, they are now all dead and this week I feel so lonely and feelings I thought had faded have become so sharpe again, I lived in that road, had the cane for sliding on the school roof in the holidays, we drew our hopscotch on the road in front of the school. It was the safest , loved filled place to grow up in and in minutes I realised there was no such thing as the safest place in the world , it left me scarred , what it did to those parents and the children who survived , but they did , the men went back to the pit . Two things haunt me , my father that night when he came back from the school exhausted sat and cried out - I helped put that bloody stuff up there . Two women came to the door about 7.00pm, they asked if any children lived in our house and had they come home , the records were in the school, parents were on the streets, at the school, in relatives houses, up the hospital ,in chapel and church . But they came through it because really it was one very big family.

Sorry I didn't mean to say all this , it was seeing my dad on tv last night ,I felt he was still alive . Forgive me for rambling

I remember watching the news with horror 50 years ago, and I watched the Young Wives Club with tears pouring down - the mothers were so dignified.

And the reporter asking the man who was digging if he was still hoping to find anyone else underneath and the man replying 'my Mother'.

We will never forget them

I too watched last week's programme and I also found it very moving. I was 16 and it was one of the first tragedies to impact on me as a teenager.

Crafting, thank you for joining us , that time the rest of the UK joined with us in Aberfan, I would feel comforted to know you are doing so again fifty years on. I am teary now

In fact, as ab says, some of them couldn't carry on with life.

What a terrible thing it was, don't think that I can face watching the programmes about it though . It was the first major tragedy that really made me think about life and death (I was a happy go lucky teenager) and thinking about those poor little school children gave me nightmares.I really don't know how all the adults in Aberfan carried on with life.

My father was a coal miner in Wales. It is heartbreaking to watch the scenes from the disaster. All the black and white photos of those young faces and the anguish of those waiting. So very sad. Thank you for the prompt about the minutes silence Annieb

We also watched The Young Wives Club, last week, and I remember so vividly watching the news on the day of the disaster. My baby daughter was 5 months old and I was cuddling her, and crying for the little Welsh lost children.

Some of my family went to the remembrance evening and said it was heartbreaking but beautiful, there were 116 children in the choir, same number as the children who died