pulse1 (your #8143),
Reading Frank's experiences in Italian captivity, I'm powerfully reminded of a best-seller some years ago: "
Love and War in the Apennines" (Eric Newby), Picador (1983) ISBN 978-0-330-28024-2. The usual on-line purveyors have copies (inc a £4.74 Kindle). Wiki has a very good summary.
...They flew low over the middle of Cologne and the sight of the widespread devastation of that city, with the Cathedral standing apparently undamaged, reinforced his appreciation of the horrors of the real war...
From Post p.226 #4511:
...When USAAC General "Hap" Arnold (the instigator of the eponymous Scheme (in which I learned to fly in '41-'42), toured the German cities in 1945, even he was shocked by what he saw. "One gets a feeling of horror," he wrote on seeing Cologne: "Nothing, nothing is left." (D.Tel. "Review" on 19.10.13.)...
The story of a driver, a Staff car and a General was widely disseminated in the later stages of the war (maybe it was on TEE EMM ?). So this is the original !
Now I must thank you (and I trust I speak for all) for your successful efforts to winkle his memoirs out of Frank. Please convey our thanks to him also, with our best wishes for his remaining years with us. Might I tentatively suggest that you keep up the relationship and read out to him (or print-out for him) some of the wonderful stories on ourThread ? (The Seat by the Fire is still his !)
Gratefully, Danny.
PS:
...Initially tempted to spend a considerable part of his pay on a new SS100 for £850 or an MG TB for £500 , he eventually saw sense and bought a brand new Austin Nippy (sporty 2 seat version of the Austin 7) for £130...
It would have been 2/H. They stopped production in 1939 (Wiki). In 1946, I bought a 1931 Standard Big Nine for £165 (which would have been its price new fifteen years before).
It was practically impossible to get a new car then - they all went for export. The prices for the SS 100 and the MG were about right, a new Morris Minor was around £345. Even when the XK 120 took the world by storm (1950 ?) they were priced at £995 (IIRC).