Hi flak cannon.
I can give you an insight into ww2, I was nine when it started and I can still remember the last words on the radio of the Prime Minister when he said and I quote “And so we are at war with Nazi germany”. Then the sirens went and my mother, poor soul, carrying my six month old brother, was picking things up and putting them in a paper carrier and taking them out again and shouting VIC at the top of her voice. Dad came home and quitened her down. Nothing happened for a few weeks until the GHermans invaded the low countries. Holland, Belgium and France. Then there was the miracle of Dunkirk, the British army lived to fight on, but what with? they had left their equipment over there! We also had rationing to contend with, we were hungry, but by God we were fit! As an eleven year old, I wasn’t frightened, I was very keen on knowing what was going on. We lived near the docks at Grimsby, on the River Humber and were often a target instead of the docks! Then in December 1941, the Japs started on America and that was actually the turning point of the war. Once the Americans got their act together, things changed. The Eighth Army in North Africa had been pushed back to El Alamein on the border of Egypt. !942/3 was tyhe turning point of the war. We counter attacked at Alamein and started to push the Germans back. The Americans had the Battle of Midway and their turning point and the Russians had the Germans surrounded at Stallingrad. One interesting item concerns my home town of Grimsby, fir some reason it was chosen by the Germans as a target for their terror weapon, the Butterfly Bomb. This weapon was about the size of an 8oz condensed milk tin, they were carried in containers and when dropped the containers sprung open scattering the bombs over a wide area. The bomblets would spring open and start to rotate in the slip stream unscrewing the fuse. Totally unscrewed it became contact bomb, but, if the screwed rod remained in the bomb, depending on how far it had unscrewed was the sensitivity of the weapon. Children were the biggest casualties. While all
this was going on, the Royal Air Force were mounting their thousand bomber raids on German industry. In 1943, an RAF squadron, 617, was formed with the intention of bombing the Rhur dams, they destroyed the Monhe and the Eder, which was estimated to have shortened the war by six months.
In June 1044, came D Day, troops were landed in Normandy and a year later. the war in Europe was over. hen in August 1945, Japan surrenderd.
This can’t be a day to day summary of the war. It is the memory of a boy, who was nine years old when it started and fourteen when it was all over.
It didn’t wait for me! I, like most boys wanted to be in it. However I did National Service in the Royal Artillery and six months after demob, I signed on with the Royal Air Force, became an electrical fitter and joined 617 Squadron, worked on Avro Lincolns, which was the Lancasters big brother and then we had the Canberra, which we took to Malaya for six months dropping thousand pounders on the terrorists. I was with Air cadets for thirty years and still in aviation, work at the local aviation museum on saturdays. Not bad for 79!! I also help my wife breeding miniature poodles.
Ken
