Childhood Memories pt.8

In the middle of the war, Italian prisoners of war kept in a camp on Neath Abbey Road, Neath, often times worked outside on a farm in Bryncoch, which was close to The Dyffryn Arms public house, under the supervision of the camp guards. The same Italian soldiers were put to work clearing an area about 10 or 15 yards diameter in the midst of a copse of trees. When the prisoners had moved to another site, a flat-bed back of a lorry was manoeuvred into the clearing. Mounted on the flat-bed was a large rectangular frame bearing what looked likeseveral rows of car headlamps with every thing painted a khaki colour. In the focus of each reflector was a microphone. There were no glasses on the headlamps. The frame carrying probably 60 to 70 headlamps (I didn’t count them) was swivel-able through 180 degrees and the frame could also be rolled over rather as a cement mixer can discharge on each side. Protractor scales were secured and an operator, wearing headphones coupled to the microphones would be able to find, during an air raid, the bearing and elevation of maximum sound from an aircraft engine. This system, I believe, was not very successful because of the many echoes from our cloudy sky.

A few of the Italian prisoners of war decided at the end of hostilities to stay here.

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