West Wales Veterans Archive Voted Group of the Month
Published on 01 December 2024 01:11 PM
Age Cymru Dyfed's West Wales Veterans Archive was voted group of the month with Community Archives and Heritage Group
The Community Archives and Heritage Group (CAHG) is a national group which supports and promote community archives in the UK & Ireland. They said;
"As the month of November includes Remembrance Day on the 11th, it seems particularly fitting to announce Age Cymru Dyfed’s West Wales Veterans Archive as our group of the month for November. You may recall the group won our award in 2021 for their contribution to wellbeing and, since then, have gone from strength to strength."
What got us that vote - in their words:
Age Cymru Dyfed is a charity supporting people aged fifty years and older throughout the West Wales region and their objectives have always been to reduce loneliness and isolation; improve health and mobility and people’s financial position; promoting access, choice and independence.
A grant from the Armed Force Covenant Fund Trust enabled them to develop the West Wales Veterans’ Archive (WWVA). This collection features written accounts, oral histories and photographs documenting veterans’ experiences as well as artwork and poetry created by them.
The archive has been designed to be authoritative and sustainable as well as publicly accessible and it has become an invaluable learning resource for schools, family historians and independent researchers, among others.
From the onset, the project has trained veterans in conducting social history research and collecting oral histories. We asked the group how things had developed for them since winning the award four years ago. Since the award in 2021 the veterans archive has grown exponentially, and we have held several events and even contributed significantly to a couple of television programmes:
Greatest Generation
This is an ITV production created to share stories of humour and courage from Wales’ wartime generation, including a former land girl with a wicked sense of humour and an airman shot down over Berlin.
Hugh Morgan, the veteran’s coordinator at Age Cymru Dyfed describes it “as a very fine film made capturing the psychology of very old age – told by a few from the WW2 generation aged 96-99yrs old”. Hugh introduced four of the five veterans interviewed to the producer Greg Lewis as he had already captured their stories for the archive and had been providing them with welfare support. The film was screen in 2022 and the preservation and sharing of those stories is made even more important by the fact that sadly three of those five men are no longer with us.
BBC Newsround D-Day Special
William and Lyra journeyed to Normandy and retraced the history of one of World War Two’s most poignant events which led to the liberation of Europe. They also heard about the life-changing experiences of veterans Mervyn and Arthur in France, discovering more about what took place first hand from some of the few remaining survivors, and learned more about their own families’ stories.
Again, the link with the veterans was achieved through the connections made through the archive.
Events
On 4th October 2023, Age Cymru Dyfed hosted a veterans “Greatest Generation” event Myddfai Community Hall base in Carmarthenshire.
Hugh Morgan reflected for us that it was “astonishing event with well over twenty people from the World War II generation with a family member or carer attended. I could have sold out the 120 hall capacity three times over!”
BBC Wales covered the event, and we are able to share a YouTube link to the morning part of the event, where several WW2 veterans describe their experiences, here.
This all sounds amazing, so what’s next for the archive?
You can see the current state of play here. There are still lots of interviews to be uploaded and work continues and is as important as ever.
We’re sure you can see why we’re thrilled to acknowledge the work of the West Wales Veterans’ Archive this month and its so exciting to see a group, whose work we’ve acknowledged before, continue to go from strength to strength.
See announcement on the Community Archives and Heritage Group website: