I stumbled upon your website and was overjoyed at reading the snippets of life in Swansea during the blitz, life near Oystermouth Castle and in Mumbles.
I was born during the war in Bonymaen Swansea and emigrated with my mother to join my father, an American soldier who survived D-Day landings and Bastogne with many tales of the war and the time he met my mother on a gloomy night after missing the bus back to his barracks in Mumbles. He was lost on Mansel Road when a young lad named Billy Thornton took him in to meet his parents and have a warm cup of tea. While there he met his future bride and my mother.
My parents are both gone now but they both shared many memories with me of life in Swansea during the war. My mother worried after all the boys had left with the invasion force and the anguish of not hearing of what had happened for so many weeks before word came that he had survived D-Day.
His unit landed on Easy Green Sector of Omaha Beach in the first assault wave. Much of the movie 'Saving Private Ryan' with its story was reinforced by my father's stories. Perhaps what was missing was the preliminary events of life in Wales during the great wait and the build-up.
Another significant event untold by many was the huge number of Welsh and English ladies that married Yanks as a result of the war and went away to America to start a new life and, like me, never returned to see a life and culture which we never had a chance to appreciate nor enjoy. Thank you for the website and for those who have written articles to jog the memory.
