Duncan Hilling

Born in Saundersfoot 1926, Duncan was one of 11 children his father being a miner in a nearby colliery. In 1940 he remembers going out in the fields with his father and watching bombs dropping on the oil depots in Pembroke Dock, which then burned for several weeks. Leaving a thick black pall of smoke over Saundersfoot and surrounding areas. He also recalls a Hawker Henley trainer flying low overhead, stalling and crashing with the two man crew now buried in Saundersfoot churchyard.

Duncan was called up to the RAF in 1944 and posted to RAF Cosford, but demand for air crew was low at that time of the war and he was told that he would need to leave the RAF and transfer to the Army. He undertook his basic training in Britannia Barracks, Norwich. He then trained as a Bren Gun Carrier driver in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and in January 1945 was posted to India with the intension of taking part in the invasion of Burma but remained in India until after the Atom bombs were dropped on Japan.
He was then a member of a small advance party of the 25th independent Brigade (formed out of the RWF, Dorset and the Cameron Highlanders)to go to Hiroshima as an Army of Occupation. This was only a few weeks after the first Atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and the British were billeted in a former Japanese Army Barracks.

Within the first few days of arrival Duncan and 6 of his friends took a Bren Gun Carrier into Hiroshima to see the damage. They found that one bridge in Hiroshima had completely melted, there was no building that hadn’t been damaged, some being totally destroyed. Railings on the ground that had been barriers for the river had all melted. They went into a hospital and found men, women and children lying there unable to do anything. Skin had peeled from their faces and arms. Many blinded by the bomb blast. Duncan remembers the kindness of the Japanese people during his long stay in Japan.

The British troops had not been made aware of any danger from radiation and many of Duncan's colleagues later died from cancer. Duncan was then posted to Malaya but having contracted Yellow Fever, spent 3 months in hospital in Kuala Lumper, before being posted home and demobbed.

Leaving the army Duncan was told he had 3 possible options for a civilian occupation., shoemaker, horticulture or farming. His childhood sweetheart and soon to be wife, Audrey, then shared her thoughts with him. Duncan listened carefully to Audrey and thought his only choice was to become a gardener. He then had a successful career as head gardener at Picton Castle and became the head of grounds for several psychiatric hospitals in the south east and south west of England and also at St Davids hospital in Carmarthen.