RAF veteran looks back on a long life in Bryncrug - and a year on Christmas Island

The first time John Williams stepped onto a plane, he was bound for Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean - just a few weeks after the British had detonated a nuclear bomb there in 1958.

John was 22 years old and a senior aircraftman (SAC) driver in the RAF when he was sent to the other side of the world as part of Operation Grapple, a series of trials of early atomic and hydrogen bombs carried out at Christmas (now Kiritimati) and nearby Malden Island in 1957 and 1958, which resulted in nine nuclear explosions.

Many veterans of Britain's nuclear testing programme of the 1950s and '60s reported severe health problems - from cancers to organ failure - which they attributed to the tests. Although John has suffered with ulcers most of his life and had a mini-stroke at 55, he's still here - and living happily with his wife Annette in Bryncrug. 

And, 65 years on, he recently received the commemorative medal awarded to veterans of the tests, which the Government agreed to distribute after years of campaigning by ex-service personnel.

"I don't know why, but I'm quite proud of it," says John, holding up the Nuclear Test Medal in the lounge of his home in Tremfathew. "Nuclear test vets have been fighting for years to get this recognition. Sixty-odd years is a long time to wait - my feeling is that we should have had the medal when we were out there."

Was John not worried at the time about radiation fallout? "At that age, would you worry?!"

However, he remembers driving around the island with dust swirling all about, as well as DDT (the now-banned insecticide developed in the 1940s to help control diseases such as typhus and malaria) "being sprayed twice a day. But it never bothered us. We didn't have any kind of protective clothing - just shorts, flip-flops and sunglasses!"

During the year John was stationed on Christmas Island, one of the highlights was taking delivery of loaves of Bara Brith made by Annette, then his girlfriend, back home in Wales. "I remember I made them using Ovaltine," she recalls.

The couple met in Tywyn, where Annette - who was also known as Anna - lived with her parents, who ran a china shop (now Peckish). She was 17 and John was 20. Just four months after they started dating, John left to do National Service and was away for three years. They married when he left the RAF and returned to Bryncrug, setting up home in the end-of-terrace house next door to where they live now. 

John worked as a carpenter, for the last 20 years of his career with British Rail. In 1983, he was appointed clerk of works for the first renovation of Barmouth Bridge. Annette spent 30 years working in Spar in Tywyn. The couple raised two daughters, Wendy and Rosie, and now have four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. 

Although John's time in the RAF was relatively brief, his link with the service has been lifelong: He became a member of the Royal Air Forces Association in 1961 and for 47 years was on the Wales, Midland and South-West Area Council, stepping down only last year.

John's memories of Bryncrug date back to when he first arrived in the village as a small boy.

"My mother was from Bryncrug and my father was from Anglesey, but I was born in Birkenhead," he explains. "In 1940 or '41, when I was four or five, my father had a nervous breakdown, so my mother brought me down here to live with my grandmother, Anne Griffiths, who lived in what was once Mary Jones's cottage and where my daughter Rosie lives now. My grandmother actually knew Mary Jones, although she had only a young child's memory of her."

John's father, who eventually joined the family, was a stonemason and bricklayer. One project he worked on was the restoration of 13th century castle Castell y Bere. "His remit was to 'build it as if it's falling down'. He would cycle from Bryncrug up the Dysynni Valley every day."

John already knew Welsh when he arrived in the village. At Bryncrug Primary School - now the village ganolfan (community centre) - all the lessons were conducted in Welsh. "I didn't forget my English, though, as there were evacuee children from England and I would talk to them."

His memories of primary school include "having to stand on a bench with your arms out to the side if you did something wrong", a "very good, understanding teacher" teacher called Mrs Williams and the headmaster, Rhys Griffiths.

John can still picture the village bustling with shops and businesses. As well as two grocery stores, there was a butcher's shop, an ironmonger, a baker "and, according to my mother, a cobbler at the end house next to the church that later became the post office. There was also a blacksmith on the road out to Abergynolwyn. 

"I remember when there was a working mill down the lane leading to Penowern Farm. Grain was brought by horse and cart from the surrounding farms. And the fellow from the mill used to come round the village two or three times a week to empty the water closets. You'd sometimes see the contents trickling out...! Two of the local farms would sell milk from a bike."

Then there was a small bus company run by Archie Richards and known as Archie's Bus that operated from a garage opposite the Peniarth Arms. 

Annual events included a Christmas play that toured the neighbouring villages and a gipsy pageant.

Another memory of "old" Bryncrug is of it actually being three villages. "There was Perthcutiau, which ran from the bridge to where we live; then from the church down to Rosie's house was Bryncrug, and the area on the way to Craig yr Aderyn was Pentre. We have maps somewhere that show them as three different places. Over time it became one village."

Through the decades, the village has changed. "It's altered a lot," says John. "At one time it was all Welsh and now it's more mixed. For a while it lost something of its sense of community, but slowly it seems to be getting it back."

John (back row, far right) at Bryncrug Primary School, 1940s

Archie's Bus stuck in snowdrift, 1929

Bryncrug in the snow, 1982

When Bryncrug still had a shop

Gipsy pageant parade through Tywyn, 1950s