My Grandfathers WW2 BD Blouse.....still kept in the family.....Canadian-manufactured, badged for the 5th Batt Seaforth's, 51st (Highland) Div.......this was his "Best" blouse and what he wore in Germany in 1945 after slogging his way there from "Queen Red" (Sword Beach) on the morning of 6th June 1944...........at that time he was in the Bucks Battalion of the Ox & Bucks LI, part of 6th Beach Group......he landed with the assault formations of 3rd (inf) Division near Ouistreham and stayed in the area until July '44 when his Battalion was broken up and he was transferred over to the 51st Div..........a pre-war Territorial, he was also in the battle of Hazebrouck during 1940 with the BEF and made it out by the skin of his teeth........photo shows 6th Beach Group troops on the beach just after D-Day......

email (option): sjmwdbikemad@aol.co.uk

What a wonderful souvenir of your Grandfather - definately something for your family to treasure.

My Father and his twin brother were SBA's on board HM Hospital Ship Vasna throughout the war. He wasn't demobbed until mid '46 and I have only recently found out the reason - they were collecting wounded Allied servicemen from various parts of the World and returning them to their countries of origin, the last trip being to Sydney, Australia.
The only souvenir I have of this period of his life is his red-cross sleeve badge and quite a few photo's, including one of the Vasna sailing under the Sydney Bridge.

I would council anyone with relatives who fought in WW2, to find out as much as they are prepared to tell you of their experiences, because once they are gone, it's too late to say "...if only I'd asked".
Scorp.

email (option): wm20@scorpionvideo.net

the problem is getting them to talk about what they had seen my father was in the first world war I have got some of his paper work and two of his medals 2 missing brought replicas we only have snippet of what he had been through I seem to have told my sister little bit more than me

email (option): roger.beck@node6.com

I have my Grandfathers medals, a uniform button, cap badge, years of service stripes (4), special purchase binoculars and 'Kings Shilling' that he got when he joined up at the beginning of WW1...He was a gunner in the RFA for the duration....
In WW2 my father volunteered but was refused as he was working in the Aircraft industry on petrol and later jet engines...Early in the war he joined the Home Guard..I have his shirt (not sure why he hung on to that) his 'painted type' Home Guard shoulder titles and matching unit markings...Also his cap badge. In amongst the family papers I found a nice photo of him in his full Home Guard rig complete with WW1 American rifle (and bayonet!) ready to repel the invaders..
Also another taken with my Grandfather at his pigeon loft post war where my father has his home guard BD on..They were all allowed to keep this and their boots on the insistence of Churchill...Small things that join us to our history.....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

Was it not so that troops were given the option of retaining the best BD or exchanging it for a 'demob' suit ? My Dad couldn't wait to get rid of his BD. He kept some insignia though. He never applied for his campaign medals..."If they can't be bothered to engrave them and send them to me then I can't be bothered to apply"

I don't know a lot about my Grandfathers service, he sold his medals for beer money before WW2. He ran away from home at 14 and joined the Middlesex Regt and served in South Africa (Boer War) and WW1 eventually doing 21 years. He also served in the Home guard in WW2. My father was a Territorial before the war and was in the 7th City of London Rgt which became The 32nd Searchlight Regt. R.A.. After the invasion he was attached to the D.C.L.I and went to Germany (Cologne). Most of the war he was in Suffolk close to were I bought my bike.... Framlingham.

I remember my Uncle telling me that they had the option of buying bits of their kit from the army when they were demobbed. He wanted to hang on to his greatcoat, but it would have cost him the best part of £1, so he just kept his belt, beret and gaiters. I've got a photo of him working on the farm in the mid 1950s still wearing his beret and gaiters. My Grandfather was an officer in the RAF, so he got to keep all his kit as he'd paid for it in the first place, I've still got most of his uniforms including his Mess Dress, not sure what happened to his sword though?

We've also got his Tam o' Shanter (somewhere), plus his medals...........and a shoe-box FULL of cloth insignia that he acquired during his tour of France Holland and Germany......I haven't dipped into this for over 16 years but it's full of British, US and German.....(and won't be for sale either !).......his greatcoat, jerkin and trousers were all worn out in the garden......

Grandad (sadly now deceased) was a tall, proud, quiet man......he wouldn't talk about WW2, but always took an interest in my interest, and loved the WD bikes (I bet he knew more than he ever said !!!)......he loved his market garden in Kent, his family and his wife my Nan (still with us at 93 !!! - and she built Wellington bombers during WW2 !)........he left us in the mid 90s one morning.......went down the stairs and never came back up........:o(

email (option): sjmwdbikemad@aol.co.uk

I have a theory that many people dealt with the trauma of war in two basic ways...One was to internalise it..put it in a box in their heads and say..'That was the war, this is now' and they didn't then talk about it...
Others externalise it and exorcise the feelings by letting it out...They like to talk about it...
I used to sit in the greenhouse with my Grandfather when I was pretty young and he would tell me stories about his time in France in WW1..and he didn't hold back on the details of the less pleasant parts....
In WW2 my father was in Coventry during the blitz and saw the destruction of that city first hand from the roof of the Aircraft factory where he worked (he had to do firewatching duties once a week)....
He probably only spoke to me about that period a couple of times while I was growing up and never in very much detail..It was like it hadn't really happened..What I found out ultimately came from me raising the subject with him when he was in his Eightees...Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

I have always been interested in history but in the 1970's it was particularly aspects of 1939-45.

As I said, my old feller like others,hardly spoke about it. The deeper I dug the more I found out, I wondered often, and still do, if I was there would I have had the bottle the old man did?, would I have done as he did?


Is any one else like that?
Wish he had talked to me, I met a lot of older service men in my younger days and because I listened instead of taking the mick as some did, they opened up to me.

The Navy guy deafened by serving the guns, torpedod twice; the Polish guy who escaped German captivity twice and ended up in the merchant; the uncle of a friend who in 1942 flew a Beaufighter round the Arc de Triumph, down the Champs Elysee and beat up the German naval HQ; the nutcase Para PT instructor wounded at Arnhem who was repatriated by the Germans because he was such a troublesome sod in POW camp; the American woman war correspondant who family yarn told of her blagging her way over to France shortly after D day and was found in a 'borrowed" jeep returning from behind German lines.

All those I knew, and wish I could have got more out of them, wish I knew what I would have done.

Poor old great Uncle Charlie was gassed and shell shocked in France, was gaga till he died in the late 60's.

I tend to agree with you Ian........I think my grandfather (and my other one who was a fireman in Liverpool/Coventry/Birmingham in WW2) were both pretty similar......they loved life and their family and kept past events firmly there......almost in a sealed box......

Grandad who was in the Army only finally started to reveal some clues when he went with my parents back to Normandy in '94 for the first time since '44 (not long before he passed away)....and even then he was firmly "clamped-up" at certain places and just wouldn't speak..........it was only after he had gone that we looked into his Army records and saw exactly what he had endured that we began to understand........he was a veteran and a survivor from the BEF long before going through it all again from 6th June '44.........

And my other Grandfather never, ever talked about the home front........but we found the clues when, with my mother, we opened some of his letters to his wife (my Nan) that revealed just what he went through.......he was blown by a bomb into the dock basin in Liverpool when a burning ammunition ship went up as he was trying to put the flames out.........and a more poignant letter sent to my Nan from (then) far away in Birmingham in the early hours of the morning from a canal side where he and his crew had been trying to put out fires from a massive air raid a few hours earlier......all he said was he was exhausted, had not slept for over 36 hours and was hungry........

email (option): sjmwdbikemad@aol.co.uk

Some of the experiences were nightmarish and basically beyond the comprehension of anyone who hasn't directly experienced it..I have always been amazed that so many managed to return to a normal life and function normally at all...
My Uncle Ray was in the Royal Navy and was sunk twice...the second time he wasn't rescued quickly and got oil in his lungs and stomache.
That led to two years hospitalisation and problems for the remainder of his life...I don't really remember him very well as he died when I was still quite young.
He was the only member of my family who had a motorcycle (a Norton) and he used to take my mother out for a 'blast' now and again...
My lot were pretty well off at that time and all had cars...My Grandfather bought my father a brand new Austin 7 in the late thirties as he didn't want him to have a bike...
My father tried the same trick with me when I showed an interest in bikes...but I wasn't having any of it. I saved up my Apprentices wages, sold everything I owned of value and bought a 5 year old, one owner Matchless as a 16th. birthday present to myself.. ..He wasn't amused at all...Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

When I was in hospital for my cancer op, a few beds down there was a an old Russian guy. He had talked to the male nurses about his experiences of being captured by the Germans in Stalingrad and sent to a POW camp, surviving in 34 degrees of frost with nothing more than his tattered uniform.
I also worked with a Pole many years ago who watched the Stukas bombing Warsaw from the roof of his family farm and ended up as an officers Valet in Paris. His one memory that he liked to talk about was accompanying his Officer (German) to a club where a woman danced on the table wearing only a pair of red shoes!
A lad I worked with was the son of a German POW and an English woman. He told me his father had been captured by the Russians. The prisoners were asked if any could read or write as they needed help filling in forms for their captives. Remembering the old army maxim he and his friend did not volunteer, those that did were taken outside and shot. He and his friend escaped and managed to get back to their own lines. Later on the Western front he was captured by the Americans and once again escaped. Finally he was captured by the Brits who whisked him straight across the channel. His wife lived in Dresden and after the raids he was led to believe she was dead and he later married the English woman. His wife had fled the town before the raids but got caught up in the general exodus from the area. She finally divorced him after looking for him for a good many years.

In the village I used to live in there was an old German guy who earned his living as a gardener, and his German wife. The story went that before the the war he was an international standard goal keeper, so he was posted onto one of the channel islands which was a safe posting. The idea was that top sportsmen were given safe postings so that at the end of the war they could resume their careers.
When the channel islands were re taken he became a POW and was put to work in our village where he got on well with people. At the war end he decided to stay in the village as he came from from Dresden and didnt want to go back as it was under Russian control, and sent for his girlfriend to come here with him.
As life got back to normal the village formed a football team to play in local leagues, and he was the goal keeper.
Other village teams who never knew of his previous international career were amazed at this brilliant goal keeper in a little village team that never let a ball past.

There were 6 German ex POWs living in my village and the surrounding area (ironically one of them bought the farm that still has, intact, a WW2 anti aircraft battery on it)...
Each year these guys would get together for a 'reunion'...
One of them, who worked as the pump attendant in the village garage, was an ex SS Cavalry man who spent most of the war fighting the Russian partisans...There, captured soldiers of both sides were routinely tortured and killed.
He told me that if badly wounded your own friends would carry out the 'coup de gras' to avoid the possibility of capture...
For the whole of the campaign he had the same horse which, even through the winters he had to find food and shelter for...The unit carried out all their own shoeing etc. and in the Winter fitted aluminium plates under the horse shoes to prevent ice being compacted into their feet...The Cavalry were used for this work as the partisans were less able to hear their approach than if they used vehicles and they could easily reach inaccessible areas....
Eventually he was moved to Normandy where each day they wold ride up to the front line area to patrol...In one village the priest came out each day and shouted insults at the Germans and told them they were finished...
One day the Sergeant tired of this tirade and shot the priest dead on the steps of the Church....Joe said they were so immune to sudden death they thought nothing of it but were relieved not to be shouted at every morning...
One day on patrol he failed to spot a Sherman tank which was behind a high hedge...As he past the tank fired at him and the shell completely blew the front end off the horse killing it outright...Joe was trapped under the remains of the dead animal until some German soldiers dragged it off him with a truck the next day....
After that he was put into a 'scratch' infantry unit and was eventually captured by the British....
As an ex SS soldier he had to go through the 'denazification' programme and returned to Germany in 1947...
Conditions there were terrible apparently so he returned to the village, later marrying a local girl...
Joe loved his horses and right up to his death was a regular rider of his two mounts....
Amazingly, after filling up the M20 at the garage for years when he said nothing much, one day he said..'That was no bloody picnic you know'..'What was that Joe?' I replied...'The war' he answered..From then on he would frequently chat to me recounting his pre war and wartime experiences...which were incredible...
It just goes to show, while there are veterans around you never know who your talking to and what they have seen and done...Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com