Could Tavernspite be a “Thankful Village”
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- Published on Friday, 02 December 2011 19:37
- Written by Andrew
Cosheston – wartime decoy for Pembroke Dock!
- Details
- Published on Friday, 02 December 2011 19:36
- Written by Andrew
Shown a Second World War Mills Grenade when they visited Carew Cheriton Control Tower recently, children from Cosheston VP School, were the latest to be warned of the dangers of finding unexploded ordnance in the area.
The grenade was found earlier in the year close to Sageston and fortunately was not live but, over 60 years since hostilities ended, shells, grenades and bullets are still surfacing and visitors to the Control Tower are warned of possible dangers in their area.
Dressed as evacuees the children from Cosheston learnt that the land just outside their small village had been used as a bombing decoy during the war. The similarity between the shoreline around Pembroke Dock and the shoreline to the west of Cosheston led to decoys being created to fool German night-raiders into bombing open fields around Cosheston Point rather than the naval dockyards.
The deployment of a range of incendiary devices designed to mimic burning houses were clearly effective as several cows were reported to have fallen victim to German bombs and craters can still be seen alongside the road from the Point.
The village itself may not resemble a typical dormitory town but that is what it became during the Second World War as people from Pembroke Dock left the town each night to take refuge in one of the ten air raid shelters built in Cosheston.
So to round off their visit the Cosheston school children donned tin helmets and huddled together in the Control Tower’s own wartime air raid shelter to sing wartime songs and to get a sense of what life as a child may have been like.
Attention grabbing pink sheep!
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- Published on Sunday, 30 October 2011 13:18
- Written by Andrew
When Western Telegraph staffer, Penny Compton, chose pink coloured sheep in a light hearted attempt to grab the attention of potential advertisers in the paper she may not have realised the very idea of painting sheep a different colour had actually saved lives in Pembrokeshire.
During World War Two the Station Commander at RAF Carew Cheriton ordered that sheep grazing near the wartime airfield must be painted bright yellow so that they would stand out should they manage to stray onto the concrete runway.
John Brock M.B.E., President of Carew Cheriton Control Tower Trust, was a young teenager in the summer of 1940 and remembers when it was decided to concrete over the original grass runways because of the increasing number and heavier warplanes using the airfield. He said, “The fleeces of sheep stood out against grass but RAF pilots returning from sorties had difficulty seeing sheep on the concrete runway. Visitors to the Control Tower think I’m joking when I tell them the sheep were painted yellow, but it’s true.”
Mr Brock said, “I lived in Milton, not far from the end of the main runway, and the village was always in danger of crashes as planes took off and landed. As it was, there were three accidents involving aircraft during the war years. On October 25th, 1940 a Polish pilot was killed when his Hurricane crashed. The following year a Whitley bomber crashed on Milton Farm after failing to gain height after take-off. Luckily, the pilot escaped with minor injuries but sadly that wasn’t the case when another Whitley crashed into Radford Quarry in 1942 killing its pilot Sgt. Brian Tidman.”
“I can see the funny side of the attempt to grab attention with pink sheep but it brings back sad memories”.