preparations for d-day

Today's paper was full of them: I was five then and have only a jumbled set of memories. 

 




​The last time I would see my father before he left for Normandy was hearing him   performing on stage at this concert as if on a cinema screen - so near to me yet so far away. And he would be for another two years. I remember Mum and I stayed in Scunthorpe for a couple of days with an engine driver, his wife and son, the same age as me. We had to sleep 'top and tail' and we got to see inside a steam engine and watch coal being fed to the boiler flames.
      The sadness was overwhelming but I had learned to keep my feelings to myself. The adults' attitude felt like 'Don't you know there's war on?' But only one thing matters and I will feel guilt to the end of my life about childhood self-pity: my father's unit arrived on D + 4 with less chance of getting killed, and he got back, didn't he, to the home that Mum had managed to maintain by going out to work. The older I get, the more I count my blessings.

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