A WELSH SCHOOL BOY'S MEMORIES

Hello and Greetings from long ago days of boyhood; days of yore when machinery mechanics roamed the land fixing diggers, bulldozers, tipper trucks and anything else wot' needed fixin'. I have a story to tell of a different way of life; born into the war torn town of Swansea in 1943 and one of the most exciting periods of our countries existence. Born on that fateful night in the West Cross district a few miles around the sweep of the bay, where forty acres had been plundered by Hitler's Luftwaffe leaving devastation in their wake; a once thriving town centre razed to the ground on the last of the night raids lit up the town watched by the west end population as it burned. For mechanically minded schoolboys in the years following, when they started to rebuild, it became the best of times because of all the machinery that the task of renewal involved. The particular machinery which grabbed our attention along with the general public was the mechanical excavator ordigger by which it became more popularly known. They could be found anywhere; in the town centre, outlying districts or country field as they dug foundation ditches and trenches within sight of fascinated onlookers watching ropes coiling and uncoiling to work the arms poking out of the front capturing the dirt with the machine turning to dump into a fleet of waiting tipper trucks taking it away to fill the seemingly insatiable appetites of other hungry holes waiting to be fed. One machine became more familiar than the ohers because it had enough space to stand behind the man operating it. Manufactured by RUSTON BUCYRUS in their LIncoln factory and if you hang around I am going to take you there!