Baglan A Wartime Paradise

A Memory of Baglan.

My Dad did his army training adjacent to Baglan during WW2.
The hastily built barracks did not have enough bathroom facilities and asked local residents for permission for soldiers to have a bath in their houses. A super-kind family allowed this for my Dad and they also invited us to stay with them.

So, my mother, younger sister and brother took a very long train journey from Grimsby and stayed for a few months. We did this twice and they visited with us after the war. They sent me presents and books for my birthday.

Baglan was a paradise and there were no air raids.

We lived in 'Cedar Gardens (number 18) with 'Auntie Do and Uncle Idris' who had two boys called Bernard and Kenneth. We managed to fit in comfortably but they must have gone to a lot of trouble for us.

Baglan was very rural, and it was super taking the dog (called 'Rags') and go for long walks in the woods and hills (which looked like the Alps to me). We also could see my Dad very often and he was manning a searchlight AA detachment which later left Baglan. Auntie Do was a super cook, Uncle Idris grew his own vegetables and he and I used to go out and pick up sheep-buttons (he called them) for his greenhouse and tomatoes. Once we walked up a stream to a hilltop (going past the church) - we got soaking wet, especially coming back down the stream with sacks of sheep buttons across our shoulders.

Uncle Idris took me to a cinema in Port Talbot one day (he worked shifts at the steelworks) and we saw the 'Fighting Lady' which is now available on the internet. I rambled for miles in the country with 'Rags' the dog, I caught a trout in a stream and Auntie Do cooked it for me. I found a tortoise in the woods and took it back to Cedar Gardens where it happily stayed in the garden but one day vanished into the woods again I think. I went to school in Baglan and see that the schoolhouse is now a Church.

After the war Auntie Do and Uncle Idris visited us in Cleethorpes. We had been bombed out and my Dad was badly affected by war service episodes. They sent me birthday cards and books as I progressed through grammar school and we used to write. I left home to work in a steelworks where I had a vey good apprenticeship with studies and we would write about that. I married and did National Service in the RAF where I received very good electronics training. This fitted me precisely for a job with an American semiconductor company so I worked for them and travelled to over 30 countries as part of the job. Two people died at that time, Auntie Do died young of cancer and I was very upset about that. Then my wife died, but after a while I married again and after all the upheavals managed to re-visit Uncle Idris again in the year 1982. He had not changed much and still grew tomatoes, he had also married again and was happy. It was so good to see him and he was knocked out at meeting my my wife because she was so beautiful which is something I did not fully appreciate until he told me. I had not married her for that reason but she was so happy she looked more that way. I was really surprised that Uncle Idris remembered everything so clearly and a bit shocked about all the extra building in Baglan but it was still a really nice village with friendly people. I then returned to my high pressure job and travelled a lot more for work.

This was a long time ago of course but I can never forget how happy a time it was for me in Baglan.

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