69Yr,s today…

Great my memory is not as bad as I thought, but where are my car keys?

Paul.
Yes, it’s a Ford V8–I’ll ask him tomorrow if he can remember anything about it.
I know he’ll say the distributor was a s*d to get to–being on it’s side in the V off the engine, behind the radiator.

Andy.

Thats a strange beast. A right hand drive “woody” My recognition skills are letting me down is it a Ford?

Andy my Father in Law was a D Day Dodger. He was in Italy and fought all through from the landing and being pinned down at Anzio. From what I know of that D Day would have been a stroll in the park!

For those not familiar with this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Shingle

Remembering Sgt W R Hunt Sherwood Foresters 1916-1999.

Paul.
Dad went ashore at Agusta in Sicily on the first day of the invasion, then after Sicily, across the Strait of Messina on a DUKW and on into Italy proper. Wounded near Foggia, he was evacuated to Durban, South Africa and then back to Italy. When he got back, his CO asked him if he had a nice holiday..!
He ended the war in the Po valley where everyone got Malaria (he still had bouts years later). After that a spell in Austria and while some sort of peace conference went on, a trip to Switzerland–which he liked very much.
Then back to the Middle East, where he spent the next couple of years–putting down riots by both Jews and Arabs.
HQ was the St Davids Hotel which the Zionists eventually blew up, I think.
His recollection of all was that the Jews were very adept at dropping a Mills grenade out of an upstairs window into your open vehicle as you drove past in the narrow streets–very nasty.
Previous to all the above, he spent six weeks at the end of the North African campaign–helping to clear up–as he put it.
In that time, he liberated a Zeiss Contessa roll film camera from a member of Rommel’s mob who had just been welcomed into the care of his Majesty’s forces.
Apparently he was unhappy about the loss of his camera but he didn’t get a receipt.
The old man than carried that camera for the rest of the time–and long after–it recorded our family holidays for many years.
Thus, I have a record of all this on flim and the camera still sits on a shelf here.

Here you go.

…..having been in North Africa before that! What a picnic – I don’t think!

Andy my Father in Law was a D Day Dodger. He was in Italy and fought all through from the landing and being pinned down at Anzio. From what I know of that D Day would have been a stroll in the park!

For those not familiar with this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Shingle

Remembering Sgt W R Hunt Sherwood Foresters 1916-1999.

All of that was refreshing to read, Andy, and, as reported from the horses mouth, so to speak!:)

ok, to put it simply,would they have approved what their tomorrows became?

Have you ever spoken to a WW2 veteran..?
My father who is still about (age ninety and driving still) would say he never thought about anything like it.
As far as he was concerned the army was better than working in a shoe factory (where he was in 1940–or the family farm, which he thought was sh*t).
He sees it as a World where me and my sister had opportunities that he and my Mother only dreamed of–so it worked out OK.
He’ll also tell you the World wasn’t some utopia back then–or now, and people are pretty much the same.

Of course, he was a ‘D-Day dodger’–I’ll let you look that one up on Google.
Still, as the song said…

“We’re the D-Day Dodgers, way off in Italy
Always on the vino, always on the spree;
Eighth Army scroungers and their tanks,
We live in Rome, among the Yanks.
We are the D-Day Dodgers, way out in Italy;”

Andy.

Therefore by extending your logic had they known what you claim they know now they would not have fought the fight. Which is of course nonsense.

Re 21

It would be amazing if we didn’t.

The point of all this is, that veterans of WW2 who survived till old age eg. now, would say and have said, maybe wryly, that they didn’t fight expecting that in the future they would be living in the kind of society they now find themselves living in.

They don’t have hindsight Kev, they have real sight. A proportionate look down the years. They knew that they weren’t fighting to bring about change on the home front. But, they knew that things at home had to change, though not to the extreme changes that we’ve experienced. which has given us the bereft, broken society that we know so well.

By the British govt in the main, but also the “general public” who were tired of rationing, and wanted (not unreasonably) to move on; but without family members that had died or suffered, were unaware of the sacrifce that was made, not just by those who died, but those who couldn’t move on, because they couldn’t forget.

These people wouldn’t be left without support nowdays, post traumatic stress was understood in ww2, but now it is addressed.

Knifeedgeturn – what do you mean by betrayal? Of whom, by whom and how?

I think you will find that at the end of the war most British Servicemen did not look further than hoping their loved ones were still alive, their home was still standing and they could find a job. Don’t forget for years many of them were living a minute at a time and hoping their number was not up! The myth “A land fit for heroes” was well and truely considered dead soon after WW1. I would think from talking to my family many years ago the idea of i want it now and instant credit and damn tomorrow would take a lot of getting used to, also people expecting respect without doing anything to earn it.

The betrayal happened in the ’50’s and ’60’s; a large part of this countries population wanted the war and it’s memories to just go away.

What was the point of going to war to defend Poland, when the Russians just took it, and were equally as brutal as the Germans were? first we were sucking up to the Russians. (to help defeat the Germans) then we were sucking up to the Germans to defend against the Russians; who was the enemy?

My father was with the Canadians on D Day, he joined up in 1940 and ended up in Berlin; despite losing something like seven members of his family (on his mothers side) during the Blitz, he never hated the Germans, and mixed in with his fond memories of the war, were others that he only spoke about once, and doubtless some he never mentioned.

He was a troubled soul, but fared better than his best friend Ralph, who was left to die in a sanatorium from TB; a fitting end for a war hero?

Mothminor – You certainly can’t tell him life will be better.

Charlie has hit the nail on the head.

I would respectfully suggest that as the 6th of June 1944 drew to a close, those that were there had other concerns. They did what they saw as their duty, as something that had to be done. And thankfully they did it. From the comments of most of the Veterans I have spoken to, their thoughts of the future ran to when they would be pulled out of the line, when they were next to go into action. 2013 was as far away in their thought as Mars is in miles.

Peace is relative. Approximately 383,000 service men and women of Great Britain and the Colonies died during World War Two. Since 1945, some 5,082 British Service personnel have died in active conflicts. The figures prove the fact that for Great Britain, the world has been more peaceful.

As to the point whether Veterans of World War Two would feel betrayed by any perceived decline in society, that is for them to say, not for us to assume. But it is worth considering that the society we have now is inconceivably better than anything that may have occurred under Nazi occupation. Ask the people of Poland, Russia and the other Countries which ‘enjoyed’ the occupation.

Regards,

kev35

You are repeating the mistake of judging the events of 70 years ago with years of hindsight. It is pointless.

Well put. Now can anyone tell my soldier nephew what life will be like in 2082?

You are repeating the mistake of judging the events of 70 years ago with years of hindsight. It is pointless.

They were born into a world that still had the workhouse (abolished 1928), and four years after D-Day they got free medical treatment for all (1948).

That’s betrayal?

Adrian

Be under no illusion, they were in the main betrayed; expected to go back to working in a factory (for example) having endured the horrors of combat,with no after care for many that had post traumatic stress, and those who messed up went to prison, like any other common criminal.

Unfortunately many died before the current trend of honouring veterans really took over, from the apathy of the ’70’s.

Was it worth it? I think it probably was, but did anyone ask the conscripts whether they were fighting to overthrow an evil dictator, or merely because they were conscripted, and the alternative was to be branded a coward.