With the anniversary of VE Day approaching it made me cast my mind back to what I was doing on VE Day and the previous years of the war when I was in the WAAF and stationed at St. Athan.

I didn’t volunteer to join up as I was already in a reserved occupation in the Goods Office on Tenby Station, having taken the place of a man who had been called up and gone to the RAF. I’d been there for two and a half years so was very familiar with the job of costing goods coming and going by rail; it was a very busy time with three men each with horse and gambo (low two-wheeled cart) delivering goods around the town.

It was a job I enjoyed, although to get there meant a walk from Amroth to Summerhill to catch the bus to Kilgetty, and from there by train to Tenby. So I bought a bicycle from McLaughlin’s Garage in Saundersfoot for £7.19s.6d, which enabled me to cycle to Kilgetty to catch the train. One memorable journey sticks in my mind. I was cycling towards Stepaside one day when I went flying over the handlebars, shaken and bruised, but fortunately otherwise unhurt, I straightened the front wheel and carried on. I later learned that a tank which was on its way to Castlemartin had caused a deep groove in the road when one of its tracks had come off.

It was January when I was called up, the Station Master was very annoyed that after training me, he would now need to train someone else in my place, and all his efforts to keep me there failed.

I ended up in Compton Bassett in Wiltshire where we were ‘square bashing’ in the snow, we also needed a series of injections and were kitted out with our uniforms.

From there I was moved back to Wales to St. Athan, a peacetime station so accommodation was good with permanent houses.

First day there I met and made friends with someone called Mavis who was from St. Dogmaels, North Pembrokeshire. My sister, Vera, was working in Cardiff at the time (in a ‘tool tipping’ factory).

It wasn’t all work. We had many special occasions when on Sunday evenings a crowd of us would go to the Tabernacle Church in The Hayes, Cardiff, for community singing. Anyone in uniform would not have to queue but could go straight in and on to the balcony and no one left at the end without a cup of tea and a sandwich. Some of the presidents for the evening would be people like Jack Peterson (the boxer), Rachel Thomas (actress) and Jack Jones (author).

We also went to the Empire Theatre where on one occasion, we saw Richard Tauber the well-known Austrian tenor.

When we went home on leave, the trains at night would be in complete darkness and you had no idea who would be in the carriage when you got in, or if there would even be a spare seat.

I was woken very early on the morning of May 8 by Mavis to tell me that everyone was gathering in the Barrack square, celebrating the end of the war. From there we all went into the civic centre in Cardiff which was already full of people dancing and rejoicing, which went on for hours. Mavis and I decided to take the Mail Train from Cardiff at 3 am to Pembrokeshire. I arrived in Kilgetty at 7 am and walked home to Amroth to spend the day with my surprised parents, then walked back to Kilgetty station by 7 pm to catch the Mail Train back to Cardiff (I met up with Mavis at Carmarthen) and after changing trains at Cardiff we arrived back at Barracks about 12.30am.

There were so many of us that took leave without permission that day, which would normally have been a punishable offence, it was all over-looked.

I didn’t want to join up, but it was an experience that I would not want to have missed and never did I think on that May day that I would still be here to see the 75th Anniversary of VE Day.

Eileen Algate,

Amroth