Wednesday, 28 December 2016 - Local People - BARRY GEM.THE early 1940s were the most important part of the war for us, the children of Barry. This was the time when the Americans arrived and were stationed at a camp in Hayes Road, Sully.
Children from the surrounding area were often invited to their cinema shows, given sweets and chocolate and the inevitable chewing gum.
For adults in Barry (mainly female), their dances were very well patronised.
To us youngsters they seemed to have an abundant supply of everything that was rationed.
The first air raid on Barry was in April 1941. Houses at the west end of the town and a number in the Barry Road/Witchell Estate areas were hit.
During the raid incendiary bombs rained down on Cadoxton Moors and at Porthkerry Park.
A few months later a dog-fight over the channel between a Spitfire and a German plane could be seen from Victoria Park.
The German plane was shot down to the cheers of a group of parents and children who were watching the action taking place.
While living on the Moors one of the older boys ‘Joey Bunkham’ used to boast that he had saved the houses on the Moors from being blown up.
Laura StreetIt wasn’t until a few years ago that I found out that he was telling the truth and that he had never got the credit for it.
What happened was that during the raid on the Moors incendiary bombs were dropped and a number landed on the top of the gasometer at the end of Laura Street. Joey and a friend climbed up onto the top of the structure and kicked the bombs of onto the ground.
Another event in the 40s was the coming ashore at Barry Island of a ship carrying oranges and other foodstuffs.
It must have had a hold full of oranges – as well as being slightly bitter, they also tasted oily. It wasn’t until after the war that we realised that all oranges weren’t sour and didn’t have an oily taste; the oranges that came ashore were destined for the manufacture of marmalade.
After the Barry Island incident it was discovered that the destructor in Barry Road was being used to destroy tins of food from the camp at Sully.
These tins were either out of date, the labels had come off, or were suspected of being contaminated.
Every night the walls around the site were lined with youngsters waiting their chance to acquire something from the yard. Tins of corned beef and spam were favourites.
If a seven pound tin of corned beef was acquired, it was corned beef hash, corn beef pasties, corned beef sandwiches for work, and finally, if any was left, into the soup it went to add a bit of flavour.
In another raid on Barry landmines were dropped and two landed in the docks. One exploded killing a watchman on a ship being repaired in the dock; the other failed to explode but was recovered after the war and taken out in the channel and detonated.
Another landed in Dock View Road and it wasn’t until a long time after the war had finished that the buildings where it had landed were finally demolished.
A total of just over 20 raids took place during the war over Barry and its surrounding area. It was said that Barry had escaped the worst of the raids because Barry was to be the chosen port for the invasion of Britain!
D-DAYAs the war progressed, prisoners of war appeared in Barry. They were mainly in camps on the Port Road. There were Germans, Italians and Mongol troops.
The Italians and later some Germans were allowed to work on the local farms. They were picked up by lorry and dropped off at the farms; some later acquired bicycles and were allowed to make their own way back and forth.
The Mongolian PoWs worked on the docks in Cardiff and were taken to work by lorry. (After the war they were sent back to Russia, where it was said they were all executed).
Preparations for D-Day led to the build up of troops in the are and equipment was stockpiled all around Barry.
More and more smoke screen canisters appeared around the town. These were lit at the onset of an air raid and gave off a thick black oily smoke.
After they had been used every house in the vicinity was covered with oily smudges. Sometimes these salamanders caught fire and it was the job of the air raid warden to extinguish the flames (you could always tell who had had that job by his singed eyebrows and hair).
There was a portable battery of these smoke screen canisters that at various times would be transported around the town, depending on the direction of the wind.
If it was blowing from the Colcot area towards the docks and a raid was imminent, a battery of canisters would be placed near Romilly Schools; if the wind was coming off the sea, they would be situated on Barry Island.
A large number were made at the Barry Enamel Works (Fellows, Chamberlin Ltd.) and after the war they were given the trade name ‘Salamander’ and modified to be used to heat workshops and garages.
Nearer D-Day convoys of troops arrived, some by road, but many more by rail, they camped in Porthkerry Park, on the Moors and the Port Road (at the top of the link road near the Half Moon Bend).
Barry Island was turned into a huge parking lot for landing craft. One day the beach was covered with them, the following day they had all disappeared. Tom Edge Pond had what looked like hundreds of empty oil drums floating on it. This was the ‘Lily Pad’, a similar one was used as a floating roadway at Normandy, allowing vehicles to be driven straight off the ships and on to the beach. It could also be used as a runway to allow the take-off and landing of A.O.P. flights.
A few days before D-Day took place the channel was alive with ; Dock View Road and Victoria Park were two of the best vantage points.
Barry was one of the main Bristol Channel shipping ports for the invasion and over 20 ships left the port to take part in it. Tanks, guns and ammunition were constantly being loaded at the docks.
Barry was one of a small number of ports where explosives could be landed or loaded from the dockside. Any spare piece of ground was used to unpack tanks and other vehicles.
Brock Street Quarry had packing cases strewn all around it. Cadoxton Bowling Club asked for, and was given, many of them to re-build its pavilion, which is still in use with a lot of the same timber in it.
At the end of the war, Barry experienced the worst snowfall it had had for many years; trains, buses and nearly all other forms of transport were halted, work stopped everywhere so that people could dig themselves out.
The local authority with its limited resources tried its best to dig the town out and clear the main roads of snow and get essential traffic moving.
After two days of being snowed in, the Americans who were stationed at Sully and who wanted to visit the Cardiff night spots appeared with their bulldozers and cleared the road from their camp to the Merrie Harrier in a matter of hours.
FIREOn the way they took out the hump-backed bridge on the Sully Moors Road that had been a bottleneck for years, they replaced it with a Bailey Bridge that gave good service for a great many years.
The last event of any moment in the 1940s was the fire at the Memorial Hall on a Whit-Monday.
The hall was being used as a hospital at the time; patients and staff were safely moved out. It took 15 years to repair the damage done by the fire.
Most of the time it was open to the elements and was liable to be demolished by a council, which didn’t have the money or the will to repair it. Eventually the repairs were carried out and the hall was re-opened by Alderman Rook in May 1957.
TOM CLEMETTLINK
