´óÏó´«Ã½

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Helen Hughes,of the People's War team in Wales, on behalf of Reg and Gwyneth Gibbons and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

Reg and I were both stationed in St. Athan, when we started to go out…and it wasn’t all that long, we got married …and we went to live with my mother in law up Pentre but it was too crowded and we had rooms in Canton, Cardiff. Then we ended up in the camp where the American soldiers were in Rhydlafer hospital near Cardiff. It was part of the camp….their living quarters, there was 32 other families there. All were ex-service people. They put all the gas and the water back on they charged us 10 shillings a week, the council took it over…A mizzen hut it was…they put up a dividing wall for us so we slept in one half and lived in the other… we were there four years. It was terrible, because we had to carry all our water. They had ablutions…rows of six for the washing…and we had to carry it all down and when it was clean we had to carry it all back up again. It was alright until we went home to my mother or somewhere like that and there was running water and all — it was lovely — and then we’d have to go back to it. My two sons were there — we had our two sons there. Thinking about it, we enjoyed it while we were there…but thinking about it now — it was hard work.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.