Reply With QuoteMy great uncle Evan George was a stoker on the HMS Exeter and was wounded and died in the battle of River Plate fighting the Graf Spee. He passed on 15th December 1939.
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Hope we are all remembering those brave souls and those who lost so many .
My mum was bombed out of central london and was an evacuee as a young child, the separation from ones family was tough , she never moaned or prayed on the obvious pain she went through .
RIP mum.
My great uncle Evan George was a stoker on the HMS Exeter and was wounded and died in the battle of River Plate fighting the Graf Spee. He passed on 15th December 1939.
She toook a bit of a mauling from Graf Spee but did the job. The ship never harrassed or sunk any more undefended merchantmen. well done!
Definitely a time for reflection and rejuvenation of the principles that have helped the world avoid such a conflict since as opposed to quaffing champagne whilst lounging around in your front garden on your tasteless union jack cushions (as the neighbours opposite are doing)
I think they (and lots of others) think today is supposed to be about celebrating 'the win' rather than remembering the losses.
This comes at a time when Britain is sailing away from the kind of shared principles and common objectives that have helped create ties with other countries and prevent conflict.
Ah yes, the shared principles and objectives of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden..Originally Posted by Eric Cartman
Haven't they all been well cared for by the Federal Government of Brussels during this pandemic.....not.
My wife though VE Day was to celebrate victory over England
Just as well we weren't at war with Denmark.
I was thinking more worldwide but whatever floats your boat.
just spent a delightful afternoon on the village green, have a bit of a " socially distanced party ", the girls made a Victoria sponge and we took a flask with tea and coffee in it
the music wasnt my cup of tea, but the oldies enjoyed it
Really???
Now come on, we went through this last week after the Trump fiasco, drinking the likes of Flash with tea will not kill the virus!!
Would hope VJ Day in August gets a bit of recognition, my old man was still at it against the Japanese on VE Day, eventually demobbed March 1946.
Really???honestly, it was just a typo
i hope we do, feel gutted for the oldies not having the gatherings they deserve
Plenty of oldies gathering out the front of houses around the Heath I see today.....
Hope they’re social distancing or they’ll end up in there.
My dad was ground crew in RAF.
Be proud 👍
My did volunteered for ground crew but ended up in the army because Monty wanted 800 drivers.
Ended up going to Eygypt, Lybia, tobruk Alemain then the invasion of Italy, withdrawn back to UK, not leave went in on day 2 on Overload and went all the way to Hamburg where he stayed garrisoned until 1946. By the time he got home he'd been away over 4 years. Never talked about it except for the funny things, and later in my life I learned to understand why that was.
But I had pictures from my mum of him and the rest of his buddies sitting on their lorries in the desert.
Carrying on the "what your dad did in the war theme", mine was in the 8th Army (76th "Battleaxe" Divn, RAMC Field Ambulance section). North Africa (Tobruk, El Alamein), then Italy (inc Monte Cassino), and on to Austria where he was demobbed. Rarely talked about it (a common theme I think amongst war veterans) but I wish now I had asked him more questions. I managed to see the war diaries for his unit at the National Archives. These are an amazing detailed daily record of the progress of the war as seen by his unit. I used it to retrace his movements through Italy when we had a holiday there a few years back. I often wonder what he would have made of that! The two highlights of the trip were firstly being able to stay in the exact same villa where his unit had stayed for some weeks looking after the wounded. It had been recaptured from the Germans and was like a time warp, as the building had been restored just as it was before the war. I could just imagine the swastika flags hanging from the upstairs balcony! The second thing was the visit to Monte Cassino and being guided around the battle sites by a professional military historian. A very emotional visit indeed. I cried at the Polish war memorial there - the sacrifice of so many young men - heartbreaking.
Which regiment? Someone I knew as a child was in the Dorsets and did that war journey with Dunkirk at the start too, if I remember correctly.
Monte Cassino was a meat grinder. But I'm sure you know that. I've taken school groups up to the monastery, the Polish memorial and to a CWG down on the plain below. Very emotional. By a strange coincidence, when teaching, I ended up with a large 3D model, that was supposedly made by German PoWs, of the Monte Cassino area. It was donated as a teaching aid. How anyone managed to even get up to the monastery, fight, not freeze and live is beyond me.
There was an episode on The World at War which focused on Monte Cassino. It was gripping.
He was a driver, RASC. He spent most of his war driving a 5 tonner for A Echlon of a tank regiment resupplying ammo. He said all the way through the desert campaign he had a tommy gun strapped behind his seat on the cab bulkhead. He only ever took it down to clean it and then put it back again. Oh and it was so hot in the day that you could fry eggs on the bonnet of the lorry, (if you had an egg) but at night it could get so cold that the petrol would start to freeze. (It freezes like hoeizontal needles and buggers up the Carburettar apparently.
The used to get a flimsy cut in hlaf fill it will sand and put petrol in it then light it and stick it under the engine to get the engine warm enough and clear enough to start. lol
flimsy was the name given to the one-time-use petrol cans that they were suppliede with made of very thin cheap tin. He said the first thing they looked for if they found and abandoned german vehicle was jerrycans.
Ditto re: vacuous celebrations when deep reflection would be more germane.
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