Bomb Blast 'siding' Margaret Street/Victoria Street 2

A Memory of Treherbert.

Another memory of Treherbert

Ben Thomas' recollection of January 2013, reminded me that he was not the only one who was lucky on that fateful day. A call of nature was Ben's escape, mine was a piano lesson. Both my mother and I were born in Treherbert and my father was from Ystrad. We had left the Rhondda when I was 2 years old and settled in Greenford, Middlesex. However my father, being a former miner, was directed back into the mines and in 1942 we were back in Treherbert - staying with my maternal grandmother in Margaret street. At the time of the bomb, my father was a collier in Tydraw colliery and I was a student in Dunraven Junior Mixed.
After some 70 years, my memory of the day is somewhat fragmented. Like Ben, I have tried but failed, to find any official report or newspaper reports of the event. I can't remember how I joined the group, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't with them when they found the bomb - which was probably a mortar bomb. I must have joined them when they were back on the siding and I can't recall any of their names. I've always thought that the idea was to break up the bomb, so we could all have a piece of the shrapnel as a souvenir. I also thought the bomb was being thrown against a large rock, but Ben says we were throwing stones at it and he's probably right.
I only left because I had a piano lesson and I was half way up Margaret Street when I saw the flash and heard the bang. I've no idea what happened in the immediate aftermath, except I know I didn't go back to the site. I believe someone had died and I seem to recall that a boy who lived down the bottom of the road lost an eye. The event remained a vague memory for 70 years - until Ben's message confirmed that it had actually happened.
Two names, Des Barnett and Mair Thomas, remained with me when I left Dunraven Juniors in July 1944 and went to Porth County in the following September. After the war, we returned to Greenford in 1946. In 1952, like Ben I too joined the RAF - but only for 2 years. One of my earliest postings was to RAF Jurby on the Isle of Man. Many years later, I discovered that there I'd had a direct association with Treherbert. The Education Officer and official cartoonist on the Station Magazine, was Flt Lt D B Thomas. His family had the butchers shop in Wyndham Street and I believe he was Mair Thomas' brother. He eventually retired from the RAF as a Wg Cdr.
My parents returned to live in Ystrad when my father retired. I have cousins living in Treorchy and I visit them most years. I try to arrange my visits to coincide with the Glamorgan Family History Society open days.
Like Ben, I follow the Treorchy choir, but only on recordings. John Hayden Davies lived in Margaret Street at the time of the 'bomb blast', when he was the Conductor of the Blaencwm choir.