This one's for you, Danny, with many thanks and a request to please keep your priceless stories coming. I did sent the 142 Sqn in France pictures to the IWM but did not receive an acknowledgment. However, there's another souvenir of India which will end up in our local aviation museum as an example of swords being turned into ploughshares.
When this little boy joined his father at Poona/Pune in early 1946 he was delighted to meet the Vengeance but very disappointed to be refused one of the Liberators which were parked in a corner of the airfield. It beat toy cars any day, and Dad had said they were only scrap so I could not understand why this ideal plaything could not grace the front of our bungalow.
In fact this piece of Liberator is still with us today. The industrious Indians cut up the Liberators, melted down the alloy and recast it in pure aluminium, which was then pressed and beaten into cooking dixies and lids for use on Primus stoves or open fires. After use the cookware would be scoured clean with sand and water. These dixies were used in India, taken home to England, used again in Aden and then put away for the past 60 years. (You never know, my parents said, they might come in handy one day.)
Pay attention kids, we had to learn these tables by heart: The cookware was assay marked with an official stamp and sold by weight, Rupees 2 Annas 2 Pice 0 per lb. From memory one rupee was worth 1s 6d (7p in today's fast-depreciating money) and there were 16 annas in the rupee. I don't remember the pice but it was somewhere below the farthing.
We also had a Liberator first-aid kit in a canvas satchel. Over the years we used the various dressings for childhood bumps and scratches, the burn cream was very effective six years later in Aden, but fortunately we did not need the useful 10 syringettes of morphine which were still in the satchel when I found it in the roofspace after my parents died 28 years later. Mum would have been horrified to see me put it in the bin ... such waste.