Garrie Felsted Wells

Interviewed by Zoe Dobson on 24th July 2003
Subject: Second World War, Midget Submarines

Garrie Felsted Wells. Yes, I remember very vividly the night they came in because my dad was by then a warden and we had a trench in the back garden and my mother was in the trench with the dog and the family silver, which wasn’t worth saving anyway, and I was wandering round watching all the searchlights and listening to all the noise. And I remember my mother calling out when my father came back to see if we were OK and saying, ‘tell that child to come down into the trench’ wasn’t at all interested in going down into this rather dank sort of slip trench in the back garden. I was much more interested in watching the searchlights.

Zoe Dobson. You had no fear.

Garrie Felsted Wells. No, none at all, but a few days later – I was at Cornforth’s then. We went to school in the morning and he wasn’t well so we all had the day off. We went round to Taylor’s Bay and watched them bringing the submarine up that had been sunk in Taylor’s Bay. We watched them bringing it up out of the water which was quite an impressive thing.