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National Geographic : 1944 Jun
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Wales in Wartime © Fox, British Combine Six Little Maids from School Dress Up for Their Bit in an Eisteddfod Wearing the glossy beavers of their grandmothers, girls of Aberayron National School take part in a music and poetry festival at Aberystwyth. Older competitors converse under the tent in background. from his toil in the vast Penrhyn quarry, may view from his windows every peak in Snow donia, all for a modest weekly rental. Tall Tales of Train Travel There is a leisured-almost a Victorian atmosphere about railway travel in Wales, even in wartime. Trains do not always, or even often, connect. The Welsh enjoy tales against their own train service. A friend relates that once her train halted for half an hour at a small way side station. When a worried passenger with a connection to catch inquired the reason, she was told that it always did so. "You see, the engine driver lives here and he must get his tea, poor man." From Bangor I journeyed in a day down the beautiful Welsh seaboard to Haverford west in Pembrokeshire, the most remote and charming of the 12--or 13-Welsh counties. (Monmouthshire, though technically part of England today, is still definitely Welsh in character.) Our train was crowded, for a company of Royal Welch Fusiliers had joined it unexpect- edly amid the mountains of Caernarvon. They wore the historic "flash," a bunch of black ribbons tacked to the back of the tunic collar, which gives this famous regiment an unusual distinction. The flash was worn in the days of powdered wigs to keep grease from the tunic (page 753). For many years the regiment was absent on the Continent. When the soldiers returned to Britain, wigs had gone out of fashion. Nevertheless, the Fusiliers retained their rib bons. They are so much attached to the flash that one officer, upon retiring to pri vate life, is reported to have had it sewn to the collar of his civilian dinner jacket! The troop was in charge of a young Lon don officer, who lauded Welsh hospitality. "At the last farm they actually asked me- quite serious, mind you-'How many eggs would you like?' " He gave a shout of boyish laughter. " 'How many eggs?' It makes a fel low feel a bit ashamed, though," he added more soberly, "when you go on leave and the wife tells you she's saved the week's ration for a treat. I just couldn't tell mine about all those Welsh eggs!" 755
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