Working in London/D-Day

During secondary school, my daughters had projects to write about WW2, and one evening over dinner, my older daughter asked my mother about her experiences. My mother lived in Cheam and travelled to work by train. She worked at the post office in Kensington. There was a large oak table in the middle of the hall where she said she would hide if they were bombed.

One evening, she was travelling home when the train suddenly came to a halt. The front of the train had been strafed by a German fighter, and some passengers had been fatally injured. She left the train and was ushered into a subway by a station porter to wait in relative safety until the raid was over.

The hairs on the back of my neck still rise whenever I recall this story - she was 18 yrs old. I looked across at my daughter, who was 18 yrs old. What a difference in two generations.

My mother had a cousin who flew Typhoons. These ground attack aircraft paved the way for a successful D-Day landing by taking out enemy radar. My mother's cousin ditched in the channel south of the Isle of Wight two weeks after D-Day after suffering flak damage. He didn't survive. He is remembered on the Runnymede Memorial.

My father took part in the initial D-Day landings on Gold beach at Arromanches. He was in the Royal Signals and was in a half-track supporting the tanks and self-propelled guns. He fought through northern France and into Holland. He crossed the Rhine into Germany just after his 21st birthday. I've given him a journal to write his story, and I'm still nagging him to make a start. I know he has many stories to tell. I've managed to get a copy of the regiment's dairy and presented this to him as a reminder.

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