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a hundred on occasions.
I too chatted with the soldiers and became friendly with a few. Most passed through their training and left after a few weeks but some stayed longer and became better known. One such was barely eighteen, a really nice lad who confided to me that he was scared of dying. He gave me a gold cross on a chain and asked me to wear it for him as a good luck charm until he returned after the war to claim it. He never did and it was only a matter of months later that a soldier who knew him told me that he had been killed. I was so upset that my father cautioned me not to get too personally involved again.
Another soldier from Llanelli had been a very keen scout leader and he helped a group of us set up a Scout Group of 3 Patrols in Brecon. We had an old scout building down by the river behind the Shire Law Courts, abandoned at the start of the war, which we quickly spruced up. I was a Patrol Second with Lyn Roberts as my Patrol Leader in the Lyon Patrol. We had a lot of fun and had several camping holidays on the shores of Llangorse Lake.
For a brief time in 1942, my father arranged for German POWs temporarily stationed near Brecon to attend morning service. He argued successfully with the authorities that there would be a fair number of Christians among their numbers who might enjoy the opportunity to worship in a Chapel. So for a few short weeks the POWs were marched under armed escort to the Plough. My father persuaded Prof. Vernon Lewis who spoke fluent German but who was at that time deeply grieving for his son Rendell killed while flying in the RAF Reluctantly Prof Vernon agreed to deliver the sermon which none of us understood but it was evident that by the end Vernon was struggling with his emotions but it was equally evident that every German was in tears and at the end they stood to a man and saluted him. Vernon, a few weeks later, told my father that the service that day had, for the first time, helped him overcome his deep hurt and anger and started the process of coming to terms with his great loss.
From time to time a convoy of tanks would descend on the town, stay a few days and them move on. It was great fun for us to watch these huge lumbering monsters negotiating the difficult narrow twisting street from the High Street down to the bridge over to Llanfaes. Peeping Tom in his position on the corner of Ship Street was often in perilous danger of getting his head knocked off.
Every boy in our school during those war years saved every penny and put the money into War Savings Certificates which from memory were 15 shillings each and on maturity after the war were worth 1 pound. My father had several small insurance policies mature and these he immediately put into our War Certificates. Each town tried to save enough to help the war effort. Brecon bought a Spitfire and later I seem to recall a destroyer, HMS Brecon. One of my hobbies was model aeroplane making and they must have been fairly good because several of them, one a scale model flying Spitfire, another a Beaufort bomber were exhibited in a shop window during a Savings Week.
Food being in such tight control, government funded restaurants were set up across the Country and Brecon had one. The meat-and-three-veg lunches that could be bought for about a shilling consisted of Whale meat which was quite edible though with a distinct fishy flavour. It was rumoured that horsemeat was on the menu too but not under that name.
Everyone was fitted for and issued with a gas mask, packed in an oblong brown cardboard box with a cord sash. It was a constant companion and after a year or so it was fitted with an extra "nose piece" which was taped on to the original. We boys decided that it was to combat a deadly new gas that the Germans had invented. It was almost a disappointment to us that we were never called upon to use them other than in Air Raid drills.
My father had a permit for a very limited amount of petrol in order to perform his duties and to attend to his satellite chapel at Cantref. He, like those few others who were allowed to keep their cars functioning, had to fit masks over the headlights which allowed only a horizontal slit of light, focused down by a lip of metal just above the slit. The illumination given was minute but after driving a short while it was surprising how much help that tiny beam was. All house windows were heavily curtained or boarded and Air Raid Wardens would knock on your door if the slightest chink of light escaped. The glass in windows and doors was criss-crossed with adhesive brown paper strips to prevent flying fragments from a bomb explosion. All these things were accepted as a matter of course and soon became the norm.
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