Aberfan

Heartbreaking

We were in Torquay recently and visited Torre Abbey. They have a garden there with plants and bushes bought by the Aberfan families in thanks for the Torquay families who hosted them for a holiday while they were trying to come to terms with their grief .A lovely gesture on both sides.

I have been thinking about the disaster a lot recently, remember it so well. Words now fail me.

Watched the program last week think it was called "The young wives club" it was all about the young women who formed a club (most of them had lost children at the school)

When they came together at their meetings and social events, no one ever mentioned the children they had lost.They all knew of course but no one ever mentioned it.

It was very sad watching the program, one of the women who of course are now in their late 60s/70 remembered how she had bought her little girl who was 8 some new shoes, the little girl wanted to wear them for school but mum said "no" you can wear them another day.but of course she never got to wear her new shoes for school,the lady always regretted not letter her wear her new shoes that day, but of course no one was to know what would happen that day.
Of course they didn't have the machinery and expertise then to search and rescue like we have today.
It was sad but also how brave those young women were to carry on and support each other as their were so many. I didn't know, but they were all buried on one place up on the hillside.

I watched the program too and as I have always found the people of Aberfan have maintained an incredible dignity under such tremendous sorrow.

Aberfan will never be forgotten.

Heartbreaking to this day. The story of the little girl's shoes is unbearably sad.
? Aberfan.

I have just watched a programme on iplayer called Surviving Aberfan. It is heartbreaking but uplifting too. Marilyn from The Aberfan Young Wives Group also appears in it.

9.15am Friday there will be one minutes silence throughout Wales, may I ask you to join us ? And if watching the programmes this week please think of the few who will not be spoken of , the parents who took their lives and Phil who went to work that day and then had to return to face the death of his wife, two sons and even the loss of their house

Aberfan was a wonderful village to grow up in , a very close community and still is .

My mother is from near Aberfan so this tragedy has always been close to our hearts.

Sir Karl Jenkins has composed a very moving work, Cantata Memoria - for the children, in remembrance. One of the soloists is Bryn Terfel. I believe a performance is being broadcast on Classic FM on Friday evening.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Oh Annie how sad. There are no words.

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.

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.)

Annieb ?