Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - The GI Bride of Cogan . . .

Julie recalls, as a child, playing in the ruins of this bombed-out house at the other end of the terrace in Cawnpore Street where she lived with twin sister, Judith, and her Mum and Dad, Morgan and Gwen Thomas. Frances continues her story : -

My father worked in a railway signal box and a bomb was dropped nearby – he had shrapnel wounds in his arm and chest and was in a serious condition at the hospital for a long time. There were frequent air raids, bombs and firebombs (incendiaries). But all that slackened off a lot when the Americans came over.

In 1943 my mother and father invited three American sailors to spend Christmas day with us – the weekly paper, the Penarth Times, had asked families to make them welcome. The three “boys” were stationed in Penarth, south Wales, with 81st Naval Construction Battalion (a.k.a. the SeaBees.) I worked in a railway ticket office and met them there at 11 p.m. when I got off work.

My future husband, Roy Spencer, was in a large house (Northcliffe House) overlooking Penarth Docks, where he worked. They constructed buildings to be used in case of an invasion – emergency hospitals, command posts etc. I believe he came to Penarth from Scotland about September 1943 and left for Falmouth, England, about April 1944 to be prepared for D-Day. He went out on the second wave of troops and landed at Omaha Beach. (Roy never talked of his time in combat.)

'Northcliffe' as per the O.S. revised map of 1947, published c.1949. Also Quonset huts (prefabricated structures) were erected within the grounds of the nearby Penarth Hotel for the billeting of U.S. personnel.