THE First World War saw millions of young men systematically wiped from the face of the planet. Many of those who remained were either physically crippled, mentally scarred, or both.

A generation that had just begun to love being in the world was tasked to shoot and throw bombs at it.

Our first taste of global conflict changed history and how people perceived it. Yet the war to end all wars never lived up to its name. It became a predecessor to yet another global conflict.

Before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and others spent years desperately negotiating with Hitler to prevent another bloodbath in Europe.

Significantly compromised negotiations with the Nazi figurehead had included surrendering the sovereign rights of Czechoslovakia and standing by as Hitler's troops took Austria.

On September 29, 1938, the four-power agreement signed by Herr Hitler, Mr Chamberlain, Sinor Mussolini, and M. Daladier in Munich appeared to promise “peace in our time.”

In Abergavenny, a six-year-old girl called Bethel Kyte who lived on Brecon Road even wrote to 10 Downing Street thanking the Prime Minister for preventing the war. Little Bethel wrote, “Dear Mr Chamberlain - I am so glad you have had a safe journey, cos I don’t want war for my daddy to go. I feel I must give you this one big X. My name is Bethel Kyte, and I am six years old.”

In his ’Sugar Loaf Musings’ column, the Abergavenny Chronicle’s Gobanium wrote, “In August 1914 when war could not be averted, there was a more light-hearted feeling, because it was not expected that the war could last long and hardly anyone had the least conception of the agony that was to follow. Now, everyone realises to the full what a world war would mean. A great many lost those near and dear to them, and a great many saw the torture for themselves, they saw their best pals maimed for life or killed. The nation does not want another war.”

A day before the peace agreement there was mass panic in an extremely tense and gloomy Abergavenny when the Seargeant Brothers siren sounded. Many people feared it was a signal that war had been declared. It was in fact only an air raid test.

That September a bus full of Jews fleeing the Nazi regime arrived from London in Abergavenny. They stayed for the night before making their way to Blaenavon. Although they had never heard of the town before, they claimed a young Welsh maidservant had told them they would find sanctuary there.

Meanwhile, in Abergavenny Town Hall, the Editor of the New Statesman and Nation, Mr Kingsley Martin declared at a mass public meeting that Chamberlain had capitulated to Hitler.

He announced, “Those who were in the last war learned that the cries of honour and empire were deceptions. We went to war for democracy and what we got out of it was Nazi Germany. It was a useless slaughter of millions of men for four years. Yet however much of a pacifist I may be, I could not say to the Czechs ‘Don’t resist. Mr Chamberlain’s surrender last week has left democracy much more weak. The person I would have liked to have visited Hitler would have been a tough-working man, a rough-tongued, hard-headed trade unionist because he would have told Hitler something different. He would have said, “Look here, we don’t want to fight, but if you do this, we bloody well will.”

All was in vain. By 1939, a bloodthirsty Hitler desired war and any further attempts to negotiate peace were doomed to failure. The Nazis exploited a fake attack on a German radio outpost along the German-Polish border as a means to invade Poland.

On 3 September 1939, Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the nation that Britain was at war with Germany and said, “We have no quarrel with the German people, except that they allow themselves to be governed by a Nazi Government."

Six years later and it is 1945. The date is May 8. Chamberlain’s replacement Prime Minister Winston Churchill officially announced the end of the war with Germany before paying tribute to the men and women who had laid down their lives for victory and to all those who had "fought valiantly" on land, sea, and in the air.

In Abergavenny strains of celebratory music run through the streets, as people dance. Their swirling movements silhouetted by the surrounding mountains ablaze with beacons to mark the Allied force's triumph over Hitler and the Nazis.

The party as you can imagine runs long and hard. The town’s pubs are drunk dry. An enthusiastic bell ringer breaks the church bell’s rope, and fireworks lit up the town like a heavenly host.

As the Abergavenny Chronicle reports at the time, “On V-E. Day it seemed that having waited for it for so long and having been so often promised that it was near at hand, people could hardly believe it had come at last.”

In cities, towns, and villages across Britain there is a collective sigh of relief. Everyone has given their blood, sweat, and tears to make such a day possible. Everyone has done their bit. Over 360,000 British servicemen, servicewomen, and civilians died during the conflict.

Sadly, as Abergavenny was celebrating the end of the war, two local lads picked up an unexploded mortar bomb on the slopes of the Sugar Loaf and were killed.

The victory celebrations were to be short-lived. The end of the war heralded the beginning of a new set of problems.

Rationing was still to exist for years to come. The Lang Penn Spitfire factory at Llanfoist closed. Jobs were lost.

The Labour Party would win a landslide victory in 1945 thanks to Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s socialistic program. People wanted change. They got it.

The world had survived and the world had changed. Abergavenny was no different. The previous six years had transformed the town. In ways both big and small.

For example, at what other point in history were the townsfolk being advised on the tell-tale signs of how to spot an enemy parachutist? Take the following extract from the Abergavenny Chronicle.

“The parachutists, apart from those dropped in disguise, are not likely to be dropped singly or in twos and threes. Those in uniform will usually appear in groups. They drop from airplanes at very low altitudes, generally from 300 feet, thus securing accuracy. A plane carries anything up to 30 parachutists, and 12 of these can be dropped in 10 seconds. The men, therefore arrive in groups and at once split into action units of six or eight to carry out the work assigned to them.

Parachutists do not, as far as is known, carry bicycles, which are brought only by airborne troops. They try to secure bicycles or cars from civilians. The parachutists’ uniform can readily be distinguished from that of any British soldier or airman. Over tunic and trousers are always worn green gabardine overalls, loose in the body, with short legs and full long sleeves, fastened down the front with a zip fastener. The steel helmet differs from the British type in having no flat rim in front or behind, and is secured by two straps.

Weapons are dropped separately in containers. Three of four of these are carried in each ‘plane and are dropped singly, attached to parachutes. From the containers, the parachutists may obtain rifles, stick grenades, anti-tank rifles, and machine guns. The parachutist carries a revolver on his belt and one man in five has a machine pistol.”

Perhaps the most famous parachutist to land, albeit indirectly in Abergavenny, was Rudolph Hess. The Kaiser of Abergavenny as he was famously known in the local area spent a good deal of the war in captivity at Maindiff Court Hospital.

The Deputy Fuhrer crash-landed in Scotland on May 16. He was here to negotiate peace between Britain and Germany, but the plan was doomed to failure. Hitler disowned him and in June 1942 Hess found himself in Maindiff Court alongside wounded soldiers from Dunkirk.

The Editor of the Abergavenny Chronicle wrote that Hitler must be a regular reader of the Chronicle as he’d sent the paper an advert for the agony column which, in the national interest he’d been unable to accept.

The message read, “Rudolf, return immediately and all will be forgiven - Adolf.”

Hess stayed in the Abergavenny area until he was shipped to stand trial at Nuremberg in October 1945. During his time here he enjoyed frequent visits to the town’s pubs and was often spotted wandering around White Castle.

Joe Clifford was one of Hess’s guards and recalls, “I remember one of my first impressions of Hess was how tall he was, the arrogant manner in which he held himself, and the way in which he usually walked with a semi-goosestep, throwing his feet out. He seemed to think that we were more his servants than his guards."

Of course, Hess was not the only POW in wartime Abergavenny. He was just the most famous one. There was a German POW camp in Mardy’s Poplars Road and before it was taken over by the American Army, the Llanover estate was used as an Italian prisoner of war camp. Many of the Italians were adamant about not returning to fight in the war, so they were considered a pretty low-level security risk. On one memorable evening, a local lady called Mary Morgan even remembers an Italian POW queuing up to watch a movie at the Coliseum.

After the Americans left, Llanover estate reverted to a POW camp again, but this time it housed mainly Germans. Some German soldiers were allowed to work and lodge on farms towards the end of the war.

Richard Ahrens had been in the Luftwaffe for a large part of the war, he was a German POW in Chepstow in 1945 and ended up staying in Wales and marrying a local girl in 1949. He went on to become the Parks Superintendent in Abergavenny. His biggest claim to fame was he was the only former German prisoner of war who would also serve in the British forces.

Ahrens was naturalised in 1952 and joined the Territorial Army. He served for 18 years. Ahrens had had a novel way of learning English and explained, “When I began reading I couldn’t make sense of the newspapers. The Beano, the Dandy, and the Eagle all helped me out.”

As soon as the war had started fears of invasion and aerial attack were foremost in everyone’s minds, and the introduction of national blackout regulations quickly spread.

It’s no little irony that Abergavenny’s street lights were brand new in September 1939. They were only used for a matter of weeks before they were switched off. By the end of the war, they had grown rusty with disuse.

The Blitz never bothered Abergavenny and there are reports of local children waving to German pilots as they passed by. Either returning or traveling to some scene of showered carnage.

The Chronicle reports that Colonel Bishop had asked for a good blackout with no cigarette smoking in the streets.

The lack of artificial light came with its own unique set of difficulties. People walking into lamp-posts was a regular occurrence The iron post in the middle of White Horse lane was a particular nuisance for unwary pedestrians. It was eventually whitewashed to stop people from bumping their heads upon it.

Eunice Gilbert recalled, “You weren’t ever allowed to strike a match. You were allowed a little torch which you could just shine on your feet, but if you lifted it up for anything, if there were police about, you were nabbed straight away. I remember hurrying home one evening and all of a sudden there was a crash. I had walked straight into somebody. He put his arms around me and I said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ and he said, ‘I’m not’!”

If cars had to use the roads at night their bumper bars had to be painted white. Car lamps had to be obscured by two newspapers and if a bulb exceeded seven watts you could forget about it. The blackout curtains had been pulled, the lights switched off, and they wouldn’t be turned back on for a very long time!

Abergavenny prided itself on the number of collections and special appeals that were made in the town. The Chronicle estimated that by June 1943, one million pounds had been raised for the war effort. Which in those days was a lot of folding stuff. Here as elsewhere, everyone had pulled together and joined the fight.

Abergavenny finally surfaced at the end of the war like the rest of the UK. Bruised and battered, a little shell-shocked and unsure of the future, but with a fire in her belly and a steel in her resolve. The worst was over. The victory came at a great cost, but the future after defeat would have been deemed unthinkable. Alongside the rest of the island nation to which she belonged, Abergavenny breathed deep and took stock. Tomorrow would bring what it may but when you had survived the trials and tribulations of the Second World War you could survive anything.

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