Thread 23 Starmer - Reflux Remedy

[DuncinToffee]

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My father fought in WW2. I didn't realise until relatively recently how traumatised he was or how bloody brave he was. He didn't talk about it to his children. I found out from other relatives.

When I was little there was a Dutch neighbour on our road. My parents were friendly with him and his wife. Pieter Wetzel I think. He was a very jolly man and took pride in his snooker table obtained from the Cruicible. He had some drinks for VE Day once; being small I got a bitter lemon and a packet of crisps.

However he had been a young boy in Amsterdam at the end of the war when the people there were starving. The Nazis had punished the Dutch taken all the food as the Allies invaded. Pieter told my father about how he hated the Germans even now and remembered the US troops who liberated Amsterdam for the coffee and chocolate they freely had. The GIs gave him food and coffee for his family and he was quite the hero.

My uncle was a WW2 RAF pilot. He was shot down over enemy-occupied France. Rescued by the Resistance, but then betrayed by one of them.

We have a photograph of him walking around in Paris, before his arrest, with Nazi officers in the background.

He was taken to Buchenwald which, thankfully, he survived. When he finally came home, he sat up all night with his father, talking about his experiences, but then after that said he wouldn’t talk about it any more.

Some years later, he was called to give evidence against the person who had betrayed him, who was sentenced to death.

Both my parents served in WW2. Dad was a Japanese POW having been captured at the fall of Singapore. Mum worked in the RAF post office in the UK (and I think thorougly enjoyed the experience).

Unsurprisingly dad didn't talk much about it much. Curiously he never blamed the Japanese in the camps as he just thought they were soldiers doing their jobs, but he had a major issue with the Sikh guards used by the Japanese at the camps because he regarded them as traitors (and they were notorious for their brutality.) This is one of those bits of history that has been largely ignored/forgotten.
Both are long gone but I always think about what they lived through during the two minute silence on Remembrance Sunday. Didn't watch any of the VE day coverage. VJ day was much more important in dad's life.

The Economist has started looking at Reform’s policies…

https://bsky.app/profile/duncanrobinson.bsky.social/post/3lopuskyeps2u

@bombastix , that was the Hunger Winter, started in the winter of 1944 and ended with the liberation in May 1945

My parents were born during the war and my grandparents never really talked about it.

@DuncinToffee - I had not heard it called that. A lot of people starved to death.

The UK lost a lot in the war but we were fortunate not to have suffered like that.

My dad was born in 1941 under occupation and absolutely suffered the consequences of the Hunger Winter. He had rickets and as a result had seriously shortened legs. He was still 6 ft 2 but would have been 6 ft 9 with normal growth. My mum was incarcerated in a Japanese POW camp and lost her father on the railway. She was deeply traumatised by the experience including the evacuation at the end, saw things no.small child should have to see. Because her generation didn't 'do' mental health, she went though life with untreated major PTSD.

Both my parents were from a German-occupied country. My Dad was conscripted into the German army but (somehow, he never talked about it) escaped and joined the RAF which brought him to UK.

My Mum was a member of the Partisans, was captured and sent to a concentration camp. DH's father was a Lancaster bomber pilot.

We both have very strong emotions regarding both wars.

I am so moved by all your parents and grandparents wartime experiences. It’s really unbelievable what they went through. Mine were small children at the time with fathers in reserved occupations so were relatively extremely lucky although the blitz came very close and my great grandmother lost two sons to it.

Agree, such moving stories. Thanks everyone for sharing. ❤️

Agree, too. Thank you, all.

My parents were post-war babies and I never really knew my grandparents for various reasons so I feel quite removed from it. Younger generations probably even more so.

Yes thank you 💕

My dad was a Radar Technician in the RAF, served mainly in North Africa and Palestine. He only really talked about the camaraderie and funny moments, but I’m sure it was a difficult time. He was away from home for the whole 5 years which must have been hard on his parents too. He’d had a tough childhood anyway, in a mining village in South Wales (born 1921 so the whole general strike etc). Despite being a grammar school boy he had to leave school at 14 due to financial hardship and went to live in a chapel boys’ home in London where he worked as a bicycle delivery boy for a greengrocer. The RAF recognised he was quite clever and trained him in radar, then his CO recommended him for teacher training in his discharge papers and he never looked back. Totally changed his life and prospects.
He died a few days short of his 97th birthday.

Our dads sound very similar @cardibach. Mine grew up in a mining community in County Durham, he joined the RAF in 1936 because he was too old to get a job in the pit! He never talked about his war to the extent that I have no idea where he was or what he did, he was commissioned after the war ended and left in 1967 to work in a bank. Mum started nurse training when women were conscripted in 1942.

It does sound a very similar background @BIossomtoes
Mum was 9 years younger than him so still a child at the end of the war. I don’t know much about her experiences at all.

As I said my grandparents didn't really talk about it but their lives were defintely affected

Thank you all for sharing these inspiring stories 💐

Thankyou so much for these stories about such personal details. It’s really
moving and poignant and reminds us that it wasn’t that far away in regards to connections to people who lied through it.

My dad’s parents were in MOD and RAF. My grandad doesn’t before I was born and my Nan never talked about it but loved to 98.

my other grandad who died when I was 8 apparently fought it single handedly at 15 👀😂 i think he was trying not to remember how it really was as lived in a naval area so was always very close to home

@BIossomtoes & @cardibach .
Coincidentally my dad was in radar in the RAF as well - albeit not on the technical side. His job was building 300ft radar towers - the last thing they did before they were captured was to demolish and destroy all the towers they had been building.

It was super top secret tech at the time @Grumpyoldpersonwithcats so well done them!

My parents were post war babies, and with df being in the military I never heard many personal stories.
Dh grandad was on the Gosport ferry, though so quite possibly at Dunkirk.

Thank you all for sharing.

My maternal grandfather was in a protected occupation so didn't fight but he was an air raid warden in London during the blitz and attempted suicide because of the distress of helping retrieve the bodies of women and children. Dad was just too young, he joined as an apprentice at 15 but didn't see active service until Palestine in '46. His elder brothers all served and 2 were at Dunkerque.

My uncle was taken prisoner at Dunkirk so was incarcerated for most of the war. According to my mum he returned a completely different person. His life and my aunt’s were ruined by it.

My grandfather in law was conscripted into the Italian army and sent to the Russian front. On the way, somewhere in North Italy he absconded with the aid of a local policeman who looked the other way and made his way on foot back to Southern Italy. He was lucky - not many survived being sent to Russia.