D Day Commemoration

[Gorgonemilezola]

Don't know if anyone watched this. Incredibly moving - the veterans speaking to the King and Queen, poetry, song, readings, Princess Anne at the Bayeux commemoration, the 17 year old cadet torch bearer, the music, sense of time and place.

I watched a programme in the week about the troops being dropped the night before DD, and they interviewed a glider pilot. He was very jovial and said something to the effect that 'well I had to put it down there and I was within fifty feet so that's not bad.' The narration said that it's widely regarded as one of the outstanding feats of aviation in WW2.

The RAF was doing air defence over D Day, but it would have depended on which squadron he was in. You can look up online I think to see what their squadron was posted to.
But it can also be the flight records missing.
My grandad has quite a lot of flight records up to a point (I'm particularly fond of the one where he writes: "I cried 'Tally ho' and descended...') but then nothing.
I'm not sure whether he did a lot more intelligence work then (he became a test pilot after the war) or whether records were lost, but I suspect the former because of other information I have.

My dm was conceived because he got an unexpected weekend off when his superior came back and said something along the lines of "d day was a success. We're going to win this; it's just a matter of time. Go home for the weekend." Result was mum!

What a fabulous story for your Mum!

Dad only joined up on 1/11/43 so after training had limited time in active fighting. Although he used to share memories of his time in the RAF, it was always 'light' stories. Looking through his Log Book now, I would love to have asked him about some of the entries - 'should see action soon', 'my friend Sgt. J. Jubb was killed this morning when his kite crashed into a Navy Tiger Moth. No survivors', 'have settled down to battle conditions. Chances 75% against'. 'Eggs away' presumably when bombs were dropped, and the time he flew VIP's to Paris on 16th April, 1945 - I wonder who they were!

Shed a few tears today - like many others.

That hits me too. Even when I was a teen it seemed like a remote lifetime ago. But it hits more seeing the next generation are now late teens/early 20s.