The Anonymous Widower

Seventy Years Ago Today

It was seventy years ago today, when the Second World War was declared when Britain and France decided that enough was enough with the Nazis.  The radio was lively this morning with some fascinating stories on Nicky Campbell’s phone-in on Radio 5.  It is very good that some of these stories have now been preserved for our descendants.

Do I have any tales from my parents, family and friends?

Surprisingly few, as my parents didn’t really talk about it.

There was my great aunt Alice, who was a psychic.  It was claimed that she knew where the bombs would fall, and a couple of times she turned up on friends or relatives and then found she had been bombed herself.  Whether it was true or, I haven’t a clue.

My father wasn’t in the Armed Forces and I really don’t know what he did.  He did tell tales about how he helped to organise factories so that they would be ready if the Germans landed and that he was an advisor in the Ministry of Aircraft Production.  I think too, that he had been briefed by Churchill.  But not much is known or remembered.  But then he ended up in the latter part of the war working as a toolmaker in a factory in Cheltenham.

So perhaps he had annoyed someone.

Or it may have been he decided he needed a change after the break-up of his first marriage.

My family was also lucky, in that I don’t know of anyone on either side, who was killed, injured or spent some time in a prisoner of war camp.

It was just all rather boring really.

But as time goes on and I get older, I am drawn towards my ancestry, Jewish on my father’s side, albeit a long way back and Huguenot on my mother’s.

Today, I’ve been thinking of all those poor people who died in the Second World War and especially those German or East European Jewish relatives of mine who didn’t survive.

September 3, 2009 Posted by AnonW | News | History, My Father, Second World War | Leave a comment