MOS EE Ynyslas: Soldier's Release Book for Gunner Sidney Arthur

Disgrifiad

A very special thank you to the Stear family for sharing this lovely document which shows the date when Sidney Arthur was demobbed from Ministry of Supply Experimental Establishment Anti-Aircraft Ynyslas (MOS EE AA Ynyslas).

His daughter, Colleen Stear, tells us that her father had worked in the paint shop at the Ford Motor Company at Dagenham before the war and continued to work there when production changed to munitions. He enlisted on 5 October 1940 and was sent to Royal Artillery HQ , No 1 Motor Machine Gun Brigade, Brighton, where he became a dispatch rider. He was posted to Ynyslas and his family moved with him in November 1943. Mrs Stear remembers starting at Borth National School.

In her own words:

'They were very happy days; to have our father living out of camp with us when off duty was a privilege as the previous years for us as with so many families had been a painful experience of separation. So my memories of Borth are quite strong and happy.

Of course we were to know nothing of the operations at the camp at Ynyslas but were aware of noisy exercises up yonder. We also had frequent contingents of heavy army lorries passing through Borth High Street. I also remember a train full of crying children arriving at Borth Railway Station, evacuees presumably hurried from the Midlands and all without parents. My father had been on reception duty at the station for that day; so too the mother of my friend who was a trained nurse. One little five year old girl billeted next door to us soon needed to be taken home by her father because she had fretted herself into illness.

Being in school was my passion, making friends and becoming a little Welsh girl for 2-3 years was very special. I still have two very good friends from those days...

The shops I remember so well. Mr Matthews' butchers and his green-grocery shop next door; his granddaughter was my friend and she recently told me that she had accompanied him when he took food supplies to the camp at Ynyslas; there was Galloway's book and toy shop where I coveted the toys through the window; I recalled Mrs Whiterod with her little grocery store, a haberdashery; then a friend who lived there.. and there...; there lived the old lady whose daily looked out to sea for her lost husband; Mr Budge's Garage; our cottage Y Gragen looking a little bit different now but mostly the same ....

THEN came the GREAT DAY in May 1945. Victory in Europe. Celebrated in the village with bunting across the High Street and all sorts of excitement including VERY LOUD noises from Ynyslas which frightened me. Booms across the bay were paraded like a huge firework display though with nothing colourful in those days... just noisy!

Then demobilization for the troops was put in place and I have his documents... with a conduct testimonial which is lovely to have.

Those closing days in Borth are etched in my mind; my daddy meeting me from school to see me home for the first time in civilian clothes. And the calendar on the wall marking that special day when we would return home to Cambridgeshire at the end of February 1946.'.