One man's experience of WW2 ...

About fourteen years before he died, my dad suffered a debilitating fall.lt left him totally paralysed for several months. Then he found he could move a little finger. And so began a lengthy struggle back towards normality. He eventually recovered sufficiently to walk with a stick, to drive again, and luckily for us: to write. With great difficulty, and at the rate of less than half-a-page a day on those days when he was well enough, he produced an impressive 60+ paperback-pages of recollections. Scratching spidery words that only my mum could decipher he persisted until the job was complete. Though beginning from his early life, the most detailed and salient recollections are from the war years: 1939 to 45 (age 23 to 29). The memoir ends in the 1960s, around the time when he acquired his first car.

He wrote this fascinating personal history only a few years before his death and I produced several copies in printed-book form which he was able to see. Since he was neither a professional nor amateur when it came to writing, it is all the more remarkable that the quality is so high, indeed so professional - I guess it's down to honesty and sponteneity and a lifelong appreciation for literature. So far as I know these memoirs have impressed everyone who has read them. Though he never shoved it down my throat - perhaps more's the pity? - I think his respect for accuracy in the use of language has rubbed off a bit on me. (If only I too could throw-off the self-consciousness not found in his work.)

Dad did consider writing of his experiences following his fall in 1984, but I think it was too much for him. And like me, he was never the most dynamic of characters; though unlike me he could never have been described as indolent - and nor Mum who, far too modest and only after constant prodding, conceded to add her own account:

MEMOIRS: 'Vague Memories'