WHEN Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess was kept under lock and key in Maindiff Court, many a local eye spotted the notorious Nazi swanning around local beauty spots such as White Castle and drinking in various watering holes.

Yet very few people in Abergavenny can recall having directly met the POW who, a few years earlier, was Hitler’s right-hand man.

John Lloyd can.

Hess not only visited his parent’s farm in Llantilio Crossenny but he actually played with John when he was a toddler.

At that age John had no reason to expect the arms that picked him up and carried him belonged to a leading Nazi and not a kindly nanny.

Now a very healthy 82, John told the Chronicle, “As you can imagine, the time Hess came to visit my parents’ farm when I was a baby and picked me up has become a very bizarre part of family folklore.

“The first occasion my mother encountered Hess was one Sunday in the summer of 1943, when she spotted three soldiers in uniform and an aloof-looking gentleman in a sports jacket and flannel trousers sitting on the roadside by their farm and sweltering in the heat.

“My mother recalled how the sergeant approached and asked if he could trouble them for something to drink. She gave them four glasses of cool spring water, and they went on their way. She put the visit to the back of her mind until three weeks later, when they returned.”

John added, “It was another hot day when the four men came back and told my mother they were heading to White Castle and asked if they could again have some water. With the generosity typical of a Welsh farmer’s wife, she invited them in for a cup of tea and some Welsh cakes.

“When they were all sitting down inside and drinking their tea, I apparently approached Hess and began tugging on his trousers. Laughing, he picked me up, sat me upon his knee, and began making funny faces at me and winking as I laughed and gurgled. My mother said the three soldiers seemed a little uneasy but were hesitant to intervene.

“Hess even put me on his shoulders and carried me around the kitchen all the while saying things in a language I didn’t understand.”

John explained that when it became time for the soldiers to leave, his mother asked the sergeant who the tall stranger in plain clothes was, and he reluctantly replied, “Rudolf Hess.”

The name meant nothing to John’s mother, and when she recounted the tale to her husband later that evening, he stared at her in total disbelief and roared, “Rudolf Hess! Don’t talk daft! Do you know who Rudolf Hess is? Someone’s been having you on!”

Some weeks later, when rumours about a top-ranking Nazi being held at Maindiff Court began to circulate, John’s parents realised that the curious stranger who had entered their little farmhouse that summer’s day and played with their little boy was indeed the man who would eventually be known by locals as the “Abergavenny Kaiser.”