Any more memories out there to keep this wonderful thread going?
A small, tenuous story, in the mean time. My father was in the army as a sergeant in WW2, and saw active service in France and Germany. Our family learned very little of his wartime experiences, though my elder brother and I developed a (seemingly unrelated) keen interest in flying and aircraft models - he, with balsa and tissue, me, being a decade later, with Airfix and Revell.
25 or-so years ago I became a 'C' Cat instructor with the ATC (photos documented in another, very long-running thread
) at Manston, and as the parents were visiting the south to see me and my new, young family, I took Dad down to Manston and wangled him a flip with me in a Mk3. In the pub later on, he told me more about his WW2 service. He'd been a glider pilot. He told me about reading the advert in a Toc H club, going for interview, the selection, and his pride in being picked for training.
I couldn't believe it. I remember the moment, in 1986, like it was yesterday. He told me he'd been sent in on D-Day+1, with a Stirling as tug, and had crashed on landing, injuring his ribs and jaw.
As a family, we were in some kind of shock. He'd kept schtum all those years and the coincidence of me taking him aloft in a glider with RAF roundels was too much for him to keep to himself, I suppose. He died 12 years ago, and I still couldn't get too much out of him. But it seemed like my brother and I acquired a genetic love of flight!
Let's get out there & cajole some more of these heroes to get their memories down here!!