Joining The Dots Again: Dad and D Day

We are now into our 12th day of a very loud Crusade being held in our little village with it's perfect amphitheater acoustics. We are being spiritually harangued with fire and brimstone night after night and I must admit to a deepening sense of island fatigue. It is time to 'get off the rock" for some R&R. Tyler, the lucky B has arranged just this and is away filling in as a chef on a charter for 5 days. It is yet another long weekend and the boys and I are chilling at home, after a busy week which I am just about managing.

On Friday it was the 70th Anniversary of D Day. For the past 3 months we have sat gripped every evening for our 30 minutes of 'Great British Menu' on BBC and we watched it right to the end with the banquet at St Paul's Cathedral. I'm also currently reading an excellent but harrowing book called 'The Good Soldiers' by David Finkel, about US troops in Baghdad. It is similar to 'The Foot Locker' and reminds me a lot of Michael Herr's 'Dispatches'. I'm not a pacifist but I do hope never to have to send any boys off to a war.

My father would have been 92 this year, but died 9 years ago. I only found out this morning when I was chatting to my Ma that he was also part of D Day. As a first generation Post-War baby I've grown up with 'The War' very much part of my family life. My father volunteered as a 18 year old boy straight from school in 1940. He joined the Royal Air Force and became a wireless operator in 120 Squadron flying Liberators.

A Liberator wireless operator. This even looks like my father, but it isn't!

Like most veterans he rarely spoke about the war, apart from the odd anecdote. I knew he was based in Iceland and was a 'U Boat Hunter' in the North Atlantic/Baltic and later flew 'Special Ops' such as Resistance fighters (mainly women) into the South of France below radar at night. He always shook his head with wonder at how brave they were and was still in awe of them over sixty years later. He also told hilarious stories about spending most of his time either fixing his wireless or having his gun in bits, no use to man or beast.

Some old photos stuffed into battered boxes in the attic of his plane attacking a U Boat used to get regularly hauled out by me to impress my teenage boyfriends, which they never failed to do. Big chunks of my childhood were spent at RAFA family parties and I vividly remember my father making the decorations for the annual Battle of Britain Ball held every year at the Rotunda in Camps Bay. He wasn't a 'When We" type at all though and my parents used to find all the reminiscing quite boring. Even this morning, when I asked my mother where Daddy's medals were, she said a bit dismissively "even my mother got a medal. My dear, everyone got medals".

Coastal Command Liberators attacking a U Boat. We had photos just like this in our attic

I showed this amazing 2 minute Pathe movie with incredible footage about "what Grandpapa did in the War" (except these are Beaufighters not Liberators) to the boys and they were mega-impressed, whilst I was faintly horrified. Makes computer games look pretty lame by comparison. I knew that my father's skippers were awarded the DFC twice, so they must have done some pretty hair-raising stuff too.

Anyway, two days before D Day on the 6 June 1944, his squadron was moved down to RAF Stoney Cross close to Southampton to provide air cover for the landings, which they did for the duration. I'm busy reading up about it at the moment (God Bless the Internet) and am finding it all quite fascinating.

Even since I was a student I've worn his "flying scarf" which he had on his missions as the planes were unheated and noisy. Later in life he developed tinnitus as a result of the latter. I've realised today that the scarf must be about 75 years old already.

I'm struck again how we are the sum of our parts. Like my parents, I'm not a backward looking person at all but this is such a big part of me and I am rather proud of my father and his legacy. How lucky the boys are too, to have a real hero for a Grandfather.