'Milford could have been wiped from the face of the earth'

But my overwhelming excuse to my lovely wife is that they are all of paramount importance to me as I endeavour to put together these nostalgic recollections of yesteryear, when growing old never entered your head, and you never dreamt how quickly 80 could sneak up on you and punch you in the head.

And from my pile of paperwork, for this week's TRM, I've combined two memories, and linked them together, admittedly somewhat tenuously.

The first is a news cutting relating to a 2nd World War incident which, with a different scenario, could easily have wiped Milford off the face of the Earth.

It was originally given to me by Milford's very own Jimmy Hughes. "One weekend in April 1941, there was considerable enemy activity over the Milford Haven waterway.

An hour or so after nightfall, the sirens called out their warnings, and people hurried into air raid shelters. Above the din, security personnel at the RN Mine Depot suddenly heard a clanking noise in the immediate vicinity, which mystified them.

It lasted for about a minute. After daylight the next morning they found a 500lb German bomb, which had glanced off a cliff face above the Depot before striking the top of an air raid shelter and bouncing away, to come to rest against the door of a Magazine containing several hundred ready to use sea mines.

Had it detonated, it would have triggered off the whole Depot arsenal, and the town would have been enveloped in a holocaust of nuclear proportions.

Thousands of mines were manufactured and stored at the Depot for loading aboard the minelayers, Adventure, Apollo, Welshman and Manxman which were all based at Milford between 1939 and 1945.

After it had been rendered harmless, the bomb used to be wheeled around the town in connection with collections for the 'Our Boys Fund,' but the people of Milford were never told where the bomb had dropped - that would have been bad for morale."

Above is a picture which shows what was once Ward's Yard, overlooking what was once the RN Mine Depot - the place where that German bomb, the one that could easily have deleted Milford off the map, must've landed.

Now, from WW2 bombs and minelayers, and aided by some gen originally provided by Ken Wonnacott, I'm switching effortlessly to WW2 mine sweepers - in this case, the Mersey Class, steel sided trawler, "Cotswold," which was requisitioned by the Admiralty, renamed "Cranefly," and converted into a minesweeper.

The Mersey Class, steel sided trawler, Cotswold.

After the war she returned to being "Cotswold," sailing out of Milford under skippers like..W. Rossant, James Hewitt, Nobby Clark and William Rostron. Her final voyage, skippered by E. Smith, was in August 1954, to Belgium, where she was to be scrapped.

Ken's trivia box had also included this "trawlermen's" poem, which his cousin had penned in 1950.

"Men, we were men, men of the sea.

It was true of my mates, and true, too, of me.

The sea was our cradle, the sea was our bed

And out of the sea, we were clothed and were fed.

You folk wanted fish, and we needed the dough

For wives and for children, for bets..and beer, too.

But not for brass only, did we take to the sea

We loved her, though feared her, we willed to be free.

The sea was our mistress, we loved her caress

We knew her kind bounty, her endless largesse.

Yet knew her mad moments, of mood, and of hate.

When fear filled our souls, and we cursed at our fate.

And what if, at times, when we landed our trips

Some lads went on high jinks, and were late for their ships.

Remember, at sea, there's no pub down the street.

Nor Sunday..nor birthdays..when out with the fleet."

I'm sure those words will have tugged at the memory strings of those hardy men who lived their lives going "down to the sea in ships," and to go with them, here's a snap of the trawler Cotswold.

Right, almost time for my next lot of pills, but before I go, here's another of those "words of wisdom"...which today comes from Lord Longford.

"Old people have one advantage compared with young ones. They have been young themselves, and young people haven't been old."

Take care...please stay safe.