大象传媒

Encouraged by Bill Reid,VC,who gave me a brief account of events leading to his award, I spent the next seven years collecting further aircrew experiences. Having served as a flight engineer in the Far East during WW2 flying B24 Liberators, I had done my fair share of very-long-range operations over Japanese territory. Lasting up to 23 hours and covering well over 3,000 miles round trip, I had no wish to discuss those events for the next forty years after returning to UK at cessation of hostilities.
However, at the age of 60, I joined a branch of the Aircrew Association. It was there I befriended Bill Reid,VC, who asked me to write his story, and encouraged me to continue collecting fellow aircrew members stories. Over the past seven years, I discovered former aircrew members were also as reluctant to divulge their experiences, just as much as I had previously done.
Becomimg closer personal friends, I was eventually able to extract short accounts of their flying experiences, and was very surprised to discover that my total had reached 77 aircrew accounts from 45 contributors, covering every area of world- wide military aviation during WW2.
Included in those reminicences were descriptions of "Peenemunde Raid" "Operation Manna" "Invasion of Sicily" "Battle of Matapan" "First Raids on Berlin" and in total 77 first-hand eye-witness accounts.
Definitely not for self-glorification, some of the stories were tragic, humorous, exciting, but all through comes the tragedy of war. Sadness and empathy for others also daring from the POWs,escapees and evaders.
Most stories demonstrate determination to win through, and regain freedom for all the occupied countries and their people.
A fairlg good example of "Their Past-Your Future" and I'm very proud that I've managed to have this collection of 77 stories published, especially when it doesn't only concern my own WW2 experiences but also expressing the thought, emotions and feelings of 44 other contributors.

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