They Shot Her - Excerpts From My Father's Memoirs. (1)

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My father hand-wrote his memoirs when he was dying of cancer, and as I was going through them the other day I wondered if any of you would find them interesting. Here's an excerpt about his experiences in World WarTwo. "In retrospect, I'm not very proud of volunteering for the Army as soon as war broke out. It left Ethel to cope with three small children on her own, and as things worked out I would probably not have had to go as I was in a reserved occupation. I was 21 years old. I spent 3 weeks training at Aldershot, and suddenly we were on a troop ship on the way to France - that's an easy date to remember as my youngest daughter Janet was being born as I was embarking. We were given a rifle on the way up the gangplank - our training had not included messing about with guns. I was stationed not far from LeHavre at a place called Bolbec, and for the first few months that I was there not much was happening on the fighting front. Everything was very tidy with the Germans behind the Seigfried Line, and our people all this side of the impregnable Maginot Line. Owing to possessing a smattering of schoolboy French, I was given an office job taking phone calls and relaying them to our Army Command - lord help us! I had plenty of free time and spent many happy hours exploring Normandy and mixing with real French people. There was a girl helping in a little cafe where I used to go, very smart, and had studied English in a British university. We became friends and she insisted on speaking only French to me, which did wonders for my communication skills. When eventually we were faced with lines of 'Pollys' (French Troops) streaming through in defeat, she was caught with a miniature camera in the guise of a brooch. They said she was photographing armoured vehicles as they came through. They simply shot her - I was so shocked. The gilt really slipped off the gingerbread in the next few weeks, the worst part being the hopeless lines of apathetic refugees. Then there were the villagers who cheered us as we headed towards the front line, then scowled at us as we headed the other way - we were lost of course." -------------------------------- Photo is of my father - I think it must have been early on in the war as he hasn't yet got any stripes on his arm. If any of you find this interesting I will post some more excerpts another time - his experiences in the war make fascinating reading - to me at any rate. .