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THIS STORY HAS BEEN ADDED ON BEHALF OF MR BRIAN THOMPSON BY A CSV VOLUNTEER AT ´óÏó´«Ã½ RADIO BRISTOL

As a young lad growing up during the war in the Cheshire town of Congleton my main recollections, apart from the sights and sounds of the German bombers going through the Cheshire Gap to attack Manchester concerns the Spring of 1944

We had thousands of American troops billeted with us, housed in the towns textile mills but we also had a large number of landing craft stored in a large field next to our local park.

The local children had a great time playing on the landing craft and although there was at that time a lot of speculation as to when the invasion of France was going to take place we knew that as long as our landing craft and of course the American troops were there then nothing was likely to happen.

Then of course everything changed, I think in mid May, and over one weekend all the troops and the landing craft disappeared and we knew that the invasion had to be fairly imminent — which it was.

On a personal level, my main observation on the war would have to be to marvel at the casting ability of the then powers that be. I have a brother, who served as a tank driver, 2 cousins who served with bomber command and a brother-in-law who spent most of the war keeping the engines of one our aircraft carriers in the pacific serviceable,

If anyone had known any of those men all their lives they could not possibly have allocated each of them a more appropriate role. Just to show however that things didn’t always work I also had a cousin who was on the whole a mild, gentle, decent man who they sent to Burma to fight with the Chindits (Whoops!)

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