Aged 4, daughter Jaya is being told to celebrate VE day at school today. I tried to explain what VE Day meant but could not in full. Aged 23, eldest daughter Olaf says she has no interest in family history. So for both of them when they grow up , here is my family and WW2: Churchill’s bunker, Arctic convoys, a Spitfire pilot and a Normandy hero, two deaths, Operation Mincemeat (covered in more detail here), a leg lost in Egypt, evacuations and at one step removed, the Air Vice Marshall on D Day, the executed Nazi who was half Jewish and the fortunate Hungarian Jew. I hope that, one day, my kids if nobody else, will find this interesting.
Postscript: I missed someone out, how could I forget Hughe Knatchbull-Hugeson? His daughter married Sir George Young, whose children included the Tory Lord George Young and also my step mother Helen who (via the Ilbert family) was also my father’s second cousin. So Hughie was the father-in-law of the first cousin of my grandmother (Lesbia Cochrane). Okay this is distant but Hughe’s claim to WW2 fame is that while in the bath or having piano lessons in Ankara where he was the ambassador his valet ( a German spy codenamed Cicero) would pilfer his safe removing papers including some alluding to D Day. “Snatch” as he was known survived the scandal which is depicted in the film 5 Fingers starring James Mason as the spy.