12-01-14, 04:40 PM
Dad joined the Queen Victoria Rifles KRRC Motor Cycle Battalion on 4th April 1939 aged 22.They went to France on 22nd May 1940 & held Calais against the advancing German panzers. They held out until 4pm on Friday 24th May when the French commandant surrendered. (Their action helped while the BEF troops were being pulled off the beaches of nearby Dunquerque )He with his surviving comrades were marched across Europe to upper Silesia. He was POW until liberated by advancing allied troops at the end of the war. He was one of the "lucky" ones cutting timber in the forests. Most of those sent down the coal mines died.
His twin sister worked on the telephone exchange at the Admiralty throughout the blitz-enough to fray anyones nerves!
When I was a small boy living in Kent there were young German bomber aircrew ( about 22 yrs old) buried in our village churchyard. The Battle of Britain was raging over the skies of Kent & Sussex in 1940. Its hard to imagine the courage of those who went up time & time again in our defence, as well as the 110.000 men of bomber command, 55,000 of them died.
I miss my Dad who died 19 yrs ago-always remember him advising me not to buy a motorcycle-that clinched it for me & have been riding since 1965! :lol
His twin sister worked on the telephone exchange at the Admiralty throughout the blitz-enough to fray anyones nerves!
When I was a small boy living in Kent there were young German bomber aircrew ( about 22 yrs old) buried in our village churchyard. The Battle of Britain was raging over the skies of Kent & Sussex in 1940. Its hard to imagine the courage of those who went up time & time again in our defence, as well as the 110.000 men of bomber command, 55,000 of them died.
I miss my Dad who died 19 yrs ago-always remember him advising me not to buy a motorcycle-that clinched it for me & have been riding since 1965! :lol