Local resident, David Williams

Description

Local resident, David Williams, has strong recollections of the military camp from his childhood. His father was one of the local tradesmen who provided services to the camp. David would accompany his father and undertake a little exploring all of his own watched over by the kindly eyes of the camp personnel.
(Voices recorded: MP - Medwyn Parry, RCAHMW, DW = David Williams)
MP: Now, you have very clear memories of the rocket range at Ynyslas but you didn't have direct connection with it, I believe it was through your father.
DW: Yes, my father was a self-employed plumber and he was roped into being the plumbing maintenance man in the camp. I was a boy at the time and ended up when he was called out to go down there, ended up being dragged down to help him. So I spent quite a lot of time in the camp with him either after school or weekends or during school holidays. So spent a lot of time snooping around, looking at things, nobody ever seemed to mind. Don't remember anyone ever telling me to clear off or object to what I was doing there or anything. They knew probably, knew who I was by sight by then. Trouble is, in those days you just snooped and didn't absorb it all for the future. People just got on with what they had to do. Nobody really knew, I don't think, nobody in the camp really knew apart from the boffins what actually was done there. So there was all sorts of crashings and bangs and explosions whizzes and things and you just got on with what you were doing, you know. And, as I say, I think a lot of the people that worked there were ancillary people who also just got on with their work and drove the lorries and cooked the food or whatever they had to do and left it to the boffins to do all the secret work that went on there. So, yes spent a lot of time there - I remember parts of the layout but again, you know, it's a long time ago now. I don't know anything specific you want to know...
MP: How do you think the local community came to accept the camp and the workforce that were there. Did they welcome it, embrace it?
DW: Well I was only thinking the other day, looking at the sea defences or what's going on there, the machines and all the activity - very few people involved seem to bother even to look at that really, they're not particularly concerned, it's just going on. And this was the state of affairs during the war. You just got on with it, it was part and parcel of what was going on - and if you did (and nobody did really) go poking your nose, peeping through railings and wanting to go and see, you'd automatically be collared as a spy or, you know, you just didn't do that sort of thing. It was part and parcel of what went on. Just as the sea defences are happening in Borth now. If you ask people in a few years time, what did they see or witness in Borth about the sea defences, they'd say I don't know they were digging up the beach and how many people are really, absolutely really involved in the intimacy of what's going on on the beach. It's just one of those things I suppose. There was many other things happening in Borth at the same time of course, there was all sorts of other activities, it was a very, very busy place. It was very, very full. Initially, especially, we had evacuees from schools that were evacuated here. People from the Midlands who owned properties here had sent all their families down away from any bombing or whatever. Lots of Midlands children shared the school here with us and there were some RAF people here. Oh I don't know, the village was really, really full. There was planes flying up and down everlasting, I was very keen on aeroplanes so I loved spotting aeroplanes. Yes, there was always bangs and crashes going on. All the time.
MP: On the question of aeroplanes, there was one particular incident where an aeroplane landed on the beach at Borth.
DW: Yes, one of ours luckily! Nothing very exciting, it was only an aeroplane used for towing air-borne targets. The aeroplane was flown from Tywyn where there was a military base and an airstrip and they were flown for the anti-aircraft training base at Tonfanau near Tywyn. So that was everlasting flying up parallel to Borth beach, two or three miles out, maybe a bit more. And that was being everlasting shot at, you know. So there we are, that used to go up and down. It was just there, you know, eventually it was just part of the scenery again.
MP: Do you know why it landed on the beach?
DW: Yes, the aeroplane that landed on the beach wasn't actually from Tywyn, the same type of plane a Hawker Henley. It was a Hawker Henley on loan to the Rolls Royce Company as a test bed for the Rolls Royce vulture engine which was being developed at that time. Being put into, or hopefully into, the Avro Manchester - forerunner of the Lancaster and it was put into a Hawker Henley to fly round the country to test it. The engine broke down and it landed in Borth and they had to put another engine in. That also broke down. I've got all the documentation - a man came here researching it all and kindly gave me copies of all the Rolls Royce details of it. Almost immediately after that, they planted railway lines all along the beach. Whether that was coincidence or what - or whether they thought if we could land here, the Germans could land too. How many people would have known about that really? A lot of people would have just think that's an aeroplane on the beach and that's it, you know.
MP: What was the approximate date of that?
DW: Without looking up my documents, I think it was 1942.
DW: One actually landed up behind us here, about a mile and a half - less than that - between here and Dol-y-Bont during the war as well. That was a Miles Martinent - a navy aeroplane - that was flying from Belfast to Plymouth, if I remember right. That was a man going down on leave - a naval officer - in a Martinet (a single engine target tug again) and he got lost in the fog. It was very, very dense fog. Got lost and hit the bank, just here, just above us here where we live. And luckily his angle hit the bank and skidded up the bank. Lost a wing and survived. Lost an eye, injured his leg. I went to see him in the hospital a couple of times. Clive Merrell his name was. Tried to make contact with him after the war - he lived in Hove - and he just didn't want to talk to it. That was the end of that. But I did do a colour, a colour. I don't know old I was, about fourteen. I immediately went home and drew it on a piece of paper because I was pretty good at drawing. I drew the plane from memory. I could draw aeroplanes as well and what details were on it. In more recent years I did a watercolour of it which is kicking around somewhere. That was another little event with aeroplanes. One went into the sea off Wallog, an Avro Anson - a navigational trainer from Penrhos that crashed in the sea on the causeway at Wallog in very bad weather. I think the crew were lost on that. All sorts of funny things happened here.
MP: Going back to the site at Ynyslas, do you have an idea of what sort of roughly what sort of numbers of people were working there at its height?
DW: Ooh, very, very difficult to say. I don't think it was a tremendous - thinking about it - I don't think it was a tremendous number, I would think it was in the low hundreds rather than sort of thousands. I would think maybe two or three hundred.
MP: Were there a few locals employed?
DW: Very few locals. A handful of women were involved in putting either propellants or whatever into shells or small missiles of some sort. They were there for a while. But I don't suppose they had the faintest idea of what they were doing or they wouldn't have been told anyway. But, there was three women I knew who definitely worked there doing that sort of work. But I don't remember anybody else working in the camp at all. One or two local tradesman, there was a carpenter there - a local carpenter who worked for a local builder's firm - he spent nearly all his time repairing the glass windows that used to shatter when they used to fire some of the big guns and things there and spent nearly all his time replacing the glass windows. And they were reinforced glass windows at that. I don't know what other workmen were there. Don't think there was any others really.
MP: Do you remember any of the firings of the missiles?
DW: Not specific missiles, no. All sorts of things used to whizz off and into the sky you know. The missiles I remember where - I think you said they had a name - the ones they used to fire up, again I've got details of that. The ones they used to fire up with the two parachutes and the wire between them. It was anti-aircraft...
MP: The two-inch rockets?
DW: Yes, they, I remember those well. They used to shoot those up into the air and they used to split up over Borth. I think they were intended to split up over the sea but half the time they drifted inland and nobody ever seemed to get - I don't remember any damage around the place, people were very lucky because these things used to come down out of the sky with a vengeance. These long things like drainpipes. The parachutes were sought after. I think the biggest parachute was about maybe eight foot across I would imagine. And, the smaller one was only about maybe three or four feet across. I don't know what the material was. Maybe something we didn't know about in those days, probably - I don't think it was nylon but it might have been something similar to that, it might have been nylon I don't know. But the women, if they could get hold of them, wanted them for making underwear and things because of clothes rationing of course you know - and bedspreads and all sorts of things - but they shouldn't have taken them. They used to go round, rounding them up these things because they used to want to plot them. They wanted to know where they landed and they had numbers on them, so they didn't like people pinching them. I had one that I used to play with. A policeman came and took it off me. I remember that.
MP: Did you ever come across the football team that they had - the Gunners?
DW: No, no I don't remember anything like that. I don't remember Ynyslas Camp playing at all, no. Len played for the boat he was on. I remember that, of course. Len's rocket ship as he calls it. That used to be anchored in the bay here quite often because it was a shallow draft - it wasn't a big thing - like a coaster. It was shaped like a tanker with a superstructure at the back and a holds all in the middle. And I can remember that firing these multiple rockets off the deck. And they fired it at night; it used to make a heck a lot of noise. I can remember them firing at night and I lived at Dol-y-Bont which is quite a way from the sea but that was enough to wake you up. It light up the sky and all hell would be let loose and you'd think what now! But there you are, it was just one of those things.
MP: When the base finished production and the whole thing was wound down, can you remember that phase going on? What happened to the community?
DW: Very, very quickly, if I remember right. People were anxious to get the place closed down. I say people, people whose properties were there wanted them back because the army had taken over them and made use of them. The war was over and they were still hanging around for quite a while after the war was over. Months if you like. And these people were saying, come on the war's over we want to move back. They were dragging their feet a bit but I suppose they had to check up and make sure the place was safe. That was one thing and I know they were still firing missiles - well all sorts of missiles and things - off at Ynyslas after the war finished which didn't go down well in Aberdyfi because the windows were being broken in Aberdyfi and there was a lot of complaints about that. But I think it was an easy way of getting rid of the ordnance was left behind. But it seemed to close down quite quickly and again one of those things where people just wanted it all got rid of. Like servicemen in the war, they just wanted to go home and get back to their jobs or families. They didn't want to stay behind and hang about. It's very strange to try and relate things like this when you were not there, I find, even talking to my son about things. It's difficult to try and explain things to people of today. I remember when he was a teenager, he used to say if there was a war I wouldn't go out and fight - he was a big pacifist as a teenager. Okay in this day and age no, of course you wouldn't, but if there was a tank coming up the road ready to shoot at you, you've got a totally different complexion on everything. This was the state immediately prior to the war when they had a debate in Oxford and asked the students: how many of you would fight for your country if the war came. And almost unanimously they said no way. And immediately the war started, they were the core of the Battle of Britain. So, you know, it's very, very difficult to see things in contexts in the light of those days. When people say, what was it like, we used to say you just got on with it.