VJ Day Commemoration
Danny - Thank you for your elaboration. Here's a small post script.
My mother survives but lives near Seattle in the USA where we eventually ended up as part of the UK's 'brain drain' in 1965. Barely into my teens, I was part of the 'body drain' and eventually returned to the UK to realise my childhood aspiration of joining the RN. However, my late father's knowledge and expertise with newly-introduced solid state circuitry was much in demand in the American aerospace industry at the time and Boeing, MD and Lockheed all competed for his services with Bill Boeing winning out. Somewhere, I hope she has kept the album of small sepia photographs, taken by my dad with his Box Brownie, recording his time with the RAF in India immediately after the war including a variety of aircraft types.
When my family was summoned to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square to undergo the exhaustive tests, examinations and interviews required for immigration, the medical staff discovered a small wax-encapsulated spider in one of my father's ears. This was removed in situ, much to my father's immediate relief (and improved hearing) but he vividly recalled the spider climbing into his ear while he occupied a camp bed in a tent at the RAF station in India where he was serving some 20 years previously.
Edited to add that my father acquired his knowledge of electronics at night school. RAF equipment was still very much based on valve (vacuum tube) technology.
My mother survives but lives near Seattle in the USA where we eventually ended up as part of the UK's 'brain drain' in 1965. Barely into my teens, I was part of the 'body drain' and eventually returned to the UK to realise my childhood aspiration of joining the RN. However, my late father's knowledge and expertise with newly-introduced solid state circuitry was much in demand in the American aerospace industry at the time and Boeing, MD and Lockheed all competed for his services with Bill Boeing winning out. Somewhere, I hope she has kept the album of small sepia photographs, taken by my dad with his Box Brownie, recording his time with the RAF in India immediately after the war including a variety of aircraft types.
When my family was summoned to the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square to undergo the exhaustive tests, examinations and interviews required for immigration, the medical staff discovered a small wax-encapsulated spider in one of my father's ears. This was removed in situ, much to my father's immediate relief (and improved hearing) but he vividly recalled the spider climbing into his ear while he occupied a camp bed in a tent at the RAF station in India where he was serving some 20 years previously.
Edited to add that my father acquired his knowledge of electronics at night school. RAF equipment was still very much based on valve (vacuum tube) technology.
Last edited by FODPlod; 16th Aug 2015 at 14:44.
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Clockwork Mouse,
Thanks so much for posting that.
My dad, although he was infantry, was a 'medic'.
He'd fought the Italians, the Germans and the Vichy French.
To his dying day, he never forgave the Japanese.
Thanks so much for posting that.
My dad, although he was infantry, was a 'medic'.
He'd fought the Italians, the Germans and the Vichy French.
To his dying day, he never forgave the Japanese.
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My father was a civilian doctor in Malaya and was called up as an MO when the Japs invaded.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
I got a book from my uncle who served in Borneo. I read maybe just a small part of the book, I guess I was in my teens, about let us say a soldier pegged out on the ground and a bamboo shoot.
In a way I regret immediately getting rid of that book.
In a way I regret immediately getting rid of that book.
Let us raise a glass too to the men of the Dakota squadons in the Burma campaign, such as No 31, who flew supply drops to the troops in the jungles below.
Thousands would not have survived without those supplies (including my father in the Royal Artillery, attached to the 23rd Indian Division) in the weeks before and after the Battles of Imphal and Kohima.
Thousands would not have survived without those supplies (including my father in the Royal Artillery, attached to the 23rd Indian Division) in the weeks before and after the Battles of Imphal and Kohima.
Absolutely, XV490. It was good to see the BBMF Dakota overflying the ceremony at Horseguards, not filling in for the Lanc nor making up numbers, but there together with the Hurricane, both very much in their own right.
The 'chutes we used some 20 years later dropping to the Brits and Gurkhas in the Borneo jungle were still termed 'SEAC' ones, reflecting the lessons learned in Burma.
The 'chutes we used some 20 years later dropping to the Brits and Gurkhas in the Borneo jungle were still termed 'SEAC' ones, reflecting the lessons learned in Burma.
