大象传媒

May I share a personal memory. All the talk about D-Day has brought it to mind. Both my younger brother and I were in France soon after D-Day. He was in the Tank Corps and I was in an RAF Mobile Signals Unit. Then, in August, I received the sad news that my brother had been killed near Caen. I would have been quite near at the time but now we were moving up through Belgium into Holland where we had to spend the winter because our troops could not cross the Rhine at Arnhem.

Then, in March I was given a week-end break in Paris. I left my case in the hotel and went for a walk. I passed a railway station and thought, 鈥淗ey! I could go to Caen and visit Len鈥檚 grave.鈥� I was given a ticket, collected my case and got in the train.

That was when I realised what a fool I was! I had no idea where the grave was; I was going to a town that had been severely damaged by the RAF; and I was wearing my RAF uniform. That last point was really serious. When we went to France,all us RAF had to change into army khaki. With our blue uniform and eagles on our shoulders we were being mistaken for German soldiers and the French resistance were shooting at us. And the war was still on.

I just despaired of myself but the train began to move. As it did so, the carriage door opened and a British soldier jumped in. He could have gone into any carriage but he came to mine. An angel?!! He was working with the unit that was registering graves in the area where my brother had been killed. He took me to his unit. They gave me a bed for the night and, in the morning, their captain drove me out into the country to a remote farm where there were four graves - one my brother鈥檚. The captain took a photo of me kneeling there.

How comforted were my parents to know that I had done this.

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