All articles in Military
26th January, 2022 in Local & Family History, Military
Norwich in the Second World War
Neil R. Storey author of Norwich in the Second World War tells the story of the city and its people, as far as possible, in the words of those who were actually there. When the acclaimed Norfolk author George Borrow described Norwich as ‘a fine old city’ in the nineteenth century…
18th November, 2021 in Biography & Memoir, Military
Germany’s war children
My father’s clergywoman called his now almost-gone generation of Germany’s World War II war children ‘sad’ when I told her about the publication of my book Boy Soldiers: A Personal Story of Nazi Elite Schooling and its Legacy of Trauma. After his retirement, my father had activel…
27th October, 2021 in Military
Borodino Field: 1812 & 1941
On 10 October 1941 a black locomotive, emblazoned with a distinctive Soviet red star, puffed into the busy station siding encased in swirling steam. As it came to a squealing, grinding halt, the flatcars behind clanked and buffeted each other to a standstill. It was becoming dark…
9th June, 2021 in Military
From the fires of Oradour
10 June marks the anniversary of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre. These identity documents were retrieved from the fire-ravaged remains of a home there. They were found by two Jewish sisters who miraculously survived the tragedy and belonged to their parents Robert and Carmen Pinè…
30th April, 2021 in History, Military
The Battle of Tewkesbury 1471
The Wars of the Roses were complicated; roughly forty years of political instability and outright fighting across England, interspersed with family feuds and encroaching foreign rulers. The Battle of Tewkesbury falls in the middle, but it was very nearly the end. The seeds of Tew…
22nd April, 2021 in History, Local & Family History, Military
Spike Island’s Republican Prisoners in 1921
During the Irish War of Independence‚ the fort on Spike Island in County Cork was the largest British military run prison for republican prisoners and internees in the Martial Law area. During 1921‚ approximately 300 prisoners and 900 internees were imprisoned there. Most of…
11th November, 2020 in Military, Transport & Industry
The final journey of the Unknown Warrior
11 November 2020 marked the centenary of the burial within Westminster Abbey of the Unknown Warrior. This was a British soldier who was killed in the First World War, someone who was originally buried in or near one of the many battlefields of the Western Front. The idea of comme…
14th October, 2020 in Military
The forgotten codebreakers of the First World War
The story of the British codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park during the Second World War is now justly famous. But Bletchley Park did not arise out of a vacuum. Part of the success of Bletchley Park between 1939 and 1945 was due to the success of the less renowned British codeb…
15th September, 2020 in Aviation, Military
Upside down and nothing on the clock in the Battle of Britain
For most people, the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was all fighters whooshing over the sunlit blue skies of southern England. It was in many ways a very public battle eagerly watched by thousands of anxious spectators far below and even captured on film to be seen by mi…
9th April, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, Military
Buster Crabb: Ian Fleming’s favourite spy
Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb was author Ian Fleming’s favourite real-life spy, whose daring exploits eventually became the main inspiration for his fictional character ‘James Bond.’ Crabb was a drinker and a gambler, who loved women, fast cars, and gadgets. A British naval fro…
9th April, 2020 in Military
The Katyn Massacre: Deceitful diplomacy and mass murder
A confidential letter arrived at the Foreign Office from the British Embassy in Washington informing them that the American Committee had been formed to investigate the Katyn massacre of 1940. This committee was established largely through the efforts of Julius Epstein, a journal…
9th April, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, Military
The Twins: The SOE’s brothers of vengeance
With the Germans having moved into Lyon, things felt very different to how they had been before. It would take a while for everything to settle down in the city and so the Twins decided the best thing to do for now was to go to Le Puy. It was November 1942. Brothers Alfred and He…