Between February 13 and 15, there were four raids on Dresden. The Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden was carried out by the British Royal Air Force and the United States Air Force (USAAF) in four phases from the night of February 13 to 15, 1945.
The photographs included in this blog were by Karl Rauscher. He was part of the Luftwaffe, specifically from the so-called Werftabteilung, tasked with repairing and scrapping downed aircraft. Before the war, he had been a professional photographer.
Some people say that the citizens of Dresden were victims of the Allied bombings. I believe the citizens of Dresden were victims of the regime that some of them had voted in. The bombings were a consequence of the policies of the Nazi regime.
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I have written about the bombing of Geleen before, but since today is the 81st anniversary, I thought it a good idea to revisit that awful day. Geleen is a town in the southeast part of the Netherlands. It used to be a mining town.
Although the Bombing of Geleen was a devastating event, I only learned about it a few years ago.
On 5 October 1942, the British RAF accidentally bombed a considerable part of South Limburg, particularly Geleen. As a result, 83 residents died, and many were injured. The material damage was immense. Due to the bad weather, the British had dropped their explosive load randomly over a far too large area.
On Monday evening, 5 October 1942, a total of 257 bombers took off in quick succession from various airfields in England. All aircraft were from the Royal Air Force (RAF). The crews consisted mainly of English and Canadians. The bombers were of the Wellington, Stirling, and Lancaster types. It was important that the weather forecast for the bombing flight (focused on destroying the German city of Aachen) cooperated. The expectation was that rain and low clouds would occur up to the northern German coastal area. A thunderstorm front over western France and southern England would also cause cloud cover above the Aachen target area. A cold front would cause difficulties in the area around Aachen. The bombers took off from the airfields with a formation over the Channel onto a Southern approach route—flying over the French town of Le Crotoy. However, to the North were the German air defenses—thus, this bombing could have been avoided.
The squadrons of RAF bombers would be led by a group of so-called Pathfinders. This group consisted of 25 Wellington, Lancaster, and Halifax aircraft. It would mark the target area by dropping flares and incendiary bombs. Next, bombers would bomb the target. This Pathfinder group had to deal with bad weather soon after the start and observed thunderstorms, lightning, electrical discharges in the atmosphere, ice build-up on the wings, and frozen bomb loads. Already at take-off, one Wellington bomber was struck by lightning, causing one of its engines to fail. The pilot returned and made a safe emergency landing after the crew had left the plane by parachute. Another Wellington Pathfinder caught fire over England, and the crew was able to leave the plane on time. The burning plane crashed into the small town of Somersham, where thirteen British citizens perished from the event.
Determining the target area of Aachen proved difficult. The planes dropped their bomb loads rather than randomly throughout the region. That included places that were often more than thirty kilometers from Aachen. Due to a change of course and bad weather, the target had become a different area than the original target of Aachen. Only 184 aircraft later reported that they had attacked Aachen. Places such as Heerlen, Brunssum, and Kerkrade were also affected. In the Geleen area, the bombs fell on all adjacent locations.
In the late evening of 5 October 1942, Geleen mistakenly been bombed. The result was a great number of people lost their lives. Due to the bad weather, the planes deviated significantly from their planned course. However, in Geleen, the approaching group of RAF bombers were spotted in time. The German Air Protection Center, located in the basement of the Geleen Town Hall, had already reported an air alarm earlier, at 9:42 p.m. After numerous flares illuminated Geleen and the surrounding area, a “major alarm” was sounded at 9:55 p.m. Immediately afterward, the bombs fell on Geleen. The town had to withstand two waves of attacks and lasted until approximately 11:10 p.m. About thirty planes carried out this inferno for about an hour. The high alarm did not get lifted until 11:55 p.m.
There were 83 deaths, 22 persons seriously injured, and 59 homes destroyed. Of the 227 severely damaged homes, 103 were ready for demolition. Furthermore, 528 houses were more or less damaged, and 1,728 houses had roof and glass damage. It caused three thousand people to become homeless.
The RAF pilots targeted mission that night was the city of Aachen, in Germany, including an area with a circumference of thirty kilometers. Flying in the direction of Geleen, the pilots imagined themselves on course to Aachen. In doing so, they almost certainly confused the States mine Maurits and its associated coking factory with the equally sized Mine Anna and the coking factory in Alsdorf. The Maurits complex is as far from the River Maas as mine Anna is, from the River Worm.
Thirteen coal miners lost their lives and the Maurits was heavily damaged in the raid. It took fire crews from several cities to help extinguish the fires caused by the bombing. Fire crews even came from Rotterdam, which is about 200 KM away from the mine, to help with the fires.
Three thousand residents were homeless, approximately twenty percent of the population. Only one plane dropped its bombs over Aachen, the actual target of the attack. A Wellington bomber crashed near Maastricht, killing five crew members. A bomber exploded during a firefight over Brunssum. Wreckage and body parts of the crew fell scattered across the municipality.
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Today 80 years ago my hometown, Geleen, was bombed by the RAF by mistake. Originally the target was the German city of Aachen. 84 were killed.
This is the story of that day:
England, 5 October 1942:
The weather at 9:15 am: rain and low clouds; at 12:15 p.m.: clearings extending South; 4:10 pm: further clearing up to the Felixtowe-Lizard line. North of this, the Allied Air Force expects clear skies well past midnight, important for returning aircraft. It is decided to carry out a bombing flight on Aachen. Due to expected clouds over the target area, the attack should be brought forward slightly. Between 19:09 and 19:40 hours, 257 aircraft take off from various airports for the flight. Leading the way are the pathfinders who will mark the target with flares. Bad weather makes the flight more difficult and some pathfinders do not reach their target area. The planes spread out over a large area.
Geleen: At 9:42 pm the command post of Staatsmijn Maurits of the air surveillance centre / Luftschutzcentrale receives the air danger signal. A warning signal is given: aircraft approaching. No more coke ovens should be emptied to prevent glowing embers from emitting light. At 10.10 pm, dozens of flares suddenly hang in the sky over Geleen to the west and northwest. Shortly after the air raid siren of 22.15, bombs down whistling. The explosions become more and more numerous and more violent. Fire breaks out in several places. Again and again, planes turn over Geleen and drop new loads of bombs.
Geleen turns into hell. Houses collapse. Debris is thrown around and clouds of dust hang over the burning city like a thick fog. Finally, around 11:10 pm, the violence subsides. The planes fly off again, leaving behind death and destruction. Miners are locked up underground in the Maurits. Shaft lifts no longer work. They are forced to embark on a long climb to the top. Miraculously, they accomplish it without accident. The last miner does not see daylight again until 10:30 the next morning.
About thirty aircraft were involved in the bombing of Geleen. 36 high-explosive bombs were dropped*. Five of them are direct hits in the Eindstraat, Vueling, Minister Ruysstraat, Nachtegaalstraat and Romaniestraat. The other bombs fell in the open field and some bombs failed to explode. Spread over the entire municipality, approximately twelve thousand incendiary bombs and three hundred phosphorus bombs were also dropped.
Fire brigades from all major Limburg places, even from Den Bosch, Tilburg, Breda, Nijmegen, Rotterdam and Aachen, provided assistance in Geleen and at the Maurits State Mine. Due to the poor visibility, the attackers have become so dispersed that there are casualties throughout South Limburg. When one of the pathfinders returns to base, he declares: We had no idea where we were.
The action has claimed about a hundred lives in South Limburg, of which 83(an 84th victim was later added) in Geleen. Among them was a twelve-year-old boy, probably Jewish, who was buried as an unknown victim. There is no death certificate for him. There were also fatalities in Beek (1), Schimmert (3), Heerlen (7) and the hamlet of Aalbeek (2).
Geleen counted 22 seriously injured. 59 homes were destroyed, 227 were heavily damaged, 103 of which had to be demolished. 528 homes suffered serious or minor damage. And 1728 homes had roof and glass damage. In addition to the streets already mentioned, the Groenstraat, Rijksweg-Zuid, Geenstraat and Annastraat were heavily affected. Three thousand inhabitants were homeless, about twenty per cent of the population. Only one plane dropped its bombs over Aachen, the actual target of the attack. Near Maastricht, a Wellington bomber crashed and five crew members were killed and one was taken prisoner wounded. A bomber exploded during a firefight over Brunssum. The wreckage and corpses of the crew landed scattered across that municipality. In all places in South Limburg, there was damage from high-explosive and incendiary bombs. What came to be called the bombing of Geleen was a night of terror for all of South Limburg. “A night that haunts you like a nightmare,” a resident of Geleen noted. Geleen experienced the darkest day in its history.
Willem Jacob van Stockum was born on November 20,1910 in Hattem,the Netherlands.
Willem moved to Ireland in the late 1920s, Where he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he earned a gold medal. He went on to earn an M.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh.
The outbreak of World War II happened while he was teaching at the University of Maryland. He was eto join the fight against Hitler and Fascism,.
He joined the Canadian Air Corps in June 1941 (according to his sister, he was asked to join the Manhattan project, but chose this instead). Taught mathematics to pilots. Then became a bomber pilot himself. Moved to Britain in the spring of 1943 and joined no. 10 squadron at RAF Melbourne in Yorkshire, he was the only Dutch officer to do so.
He flew a Halifax Mk-III, MZ684, ZA-‘B’ bomber. Completed 6 missions before being shot down by German A.A. fire near Entrammes in France on the night of 9/10 June 1944. All seven crew were killed and are buried at the Cimetière Vaufleury at Laval, Dept. Mayenne, France.
He wrote this article on his reasons for becoming a bomber pilot
“I didn’t join the war to improve the Universe; in fact, I am sick and tired of the eternal sermons on the better world we are going to build when this war is over. I hate the disloyalty to the past twenty years. Apparently people think that life in those twenty years, which cover most of my conscious existence, was so terrible that no-one can be expected to fight for it. We must attempt to dazzle people with some brilliant schemes leading, probably, to some horrible Utopia, before we can ask them to fight.
I detest that point of view. I hate the idea of people throwing their lives away for slum-clearance projects or forty-hour weeks or security and exchange commissions. It is a grotesque and horrible thought. There are so many better ways of achieving this than diving into enemy guns. Lives are precious things and are of a different order and entail a different scale of values than social systems, political theories, or art.
“Why are we not given a cause?” some people ask. I do not understand this question. It seems so plain to me. There are millions and millions of people who are shot, persecuted and tortured daily in Europe. The assault on so many of our fellow human beings makes some of us tingle with anger and gives us an urge to do something about it. That, and that alone, makes some of us feel strongly about the war. All the rest is vapid rationalization. All this talk about philosophy, the degeneration of art and literature, the poisoning of Nazi youth, which the Nazi system entails, and which we all rightly condemn, is still not the reason why we fight and why we are willing to risk our lives.
Here, let us say, is a soldier. He asks himself, “Why should I die?” You would tell him: “To preserve our civilization.” When the soldier replies: “To Hell with your civilization; I never thought it so hot,” you take him up wrongly when you sit down and say to yourself: “Well, after all, maybe it wasn’t so hot,” and then brightly tap him on the shoulder and say: “Well, I’ve thought of a better idea. I know this civilization wasn’t so hot, but you go and die anyway and we’ll fix up a really good one after the war.” I say you take him up wrong because his remark: “To Hell with your civilization” doesn’t really mean that he is not seriously concerned about our civilization. He is simply revolted by the idea of dying for ANY civilization. Civilization simply isn’t the kind of thing you ever want to die for. It is something to enjoy and something to help build up because it’s fun, and that is that, and that is all.
When a man jumps into the fire to save his wife he doesn’t justify himself by saying that his wife was so civilized that it was worth the risk! There is only one reason why a man will throw himself into mortal combat and that is because there is nothing else to do and doing nothing is more intolerable than the fear of death. I could stand idly by and see every painting by Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo thrown into a bonfire and feel no more than a deep regret, but throw one small, insignificant Polish urchin on the same bonfire and, by God, I’d pull him out or else. I fight quite simply for that and I cannot see what other reasons there are. At least, I can see there are reasons, but they are not the reasons that motivate me.
During the first two years of the war when I was an instructor at an American University in close contact with American youth and in close contact with the vital isolationist question in the States, I often felt that there was much insincerity, conscious or unconscious, on our, the Interventionist, side of the argument. We had strong views on the danger of isolationism for the United States. We thought, rightly, that for the sake of self-interest and self-preservation the United States should take every step to ensure the defeat of the Nazi criminals. But however sound our arguments, our own motives and intensity of feeling did not spring from those arguments but from an intense passion for common righteousness and decency.
Suppose it could have been proved to us at that time that the participation of the United States in the stamping out of organized murder, rape and torture in Europe could only take place at great cost to the United States, while not doing so would in no way impair her security. Would we not still have prayed that our country might do something? And would we not have been proud to see her do something?
There is an appalling timidity and false shame among intellectuals. The common man in the last war went to fight quite simply as a crusader. I am not talking about politics now, I am not either asserting or denying that England declared war from purely generous and noble considerations, but I am asserting that the common man went and fought with the rape of Belgium foremost in his mind and saw himself as an avenger of wrong.
After the war the common man went quietly back to his home. The intellectuals, however, upon coming back, ashamed of their one lapse of finding themselves in agreement with every Tom, Dick and Harry, must turn around and deride the things they were ready to give their lives for. As they were the only vocal group, the opinion became firmly established that the last war was a grave mistake and that anyone who got killed in it was a sucker.
And now, in this war, these intellectuals are hoist with their own petard. They lack the nerve and honesty to represent the American doughboy to himself for what he is. They do not give him the one picture in his mind which would stimulate his imagination and which would make him see beyond the fatigues, the mud, the boredom and the fear. The picture is there for anyone to paint who has a gift for words. It is a simple picture and a true picture and no one who has ever sat as a small child and listened with awe to a fairy story can fail to understand. The intellectuals, however, have made fun of the picture and so they won’t use It.
But some day an American doughboy in an American tank will come lurching into some small Polish, Czech or French village and it may fall to his lot to shoot the torturers and open the gates of the village jail. And then he will understand.
There is a lot of talk among our intellectuals about our youth. Our youth is supposed to want a change, a new order, a revolution or what not. But it is my conviction that that is emphatically NOT what our youth wants. Have you ever been in a picture house on a Saturday afternoon, when it is filled with children and some old Western movie is ending in a race of time between the hero and the villain? Have you seen the rapt attention, the glowing faces, the clenched fists? What our young men really want is to be able to give that same concentrated attention and emotional participation, this time to reality, and this time as heroes and not as spectators, that they were able to give to unsubstantial shadows, before long words and cliches had killed their imaginations. Killed them so dead that they can no longer see even reality itself imaginatively.
It is up to the intellectuals to rekindle the thing they have tried to destroy. It is as simple as St. George and the Dragon. Why not have the courage to point out that St. George fought the dragon because he wanted to liberate a captive and not because he wanted to lead a better life afterwards? Some day, sometime, my picture of an American doughboy in a Polish village will become true. Wouldn’t it be better for him then to have the cross of St. George on his banner than a long rigmarole about a better world?
As long as our intellectuals and leaders do not have the courage to risk being thought sentimental and out-of-date and are not willing to stress that nations as well as individuals are entitled to their acts of heroism and chivalry, they will never be able to give our youth what it needs.
It is true that every fairy story ends with the words: “and they lived happily ever after.” How irritating a child would be, though, if it interrupted its mother at every sentence to ask: “But, Mummy, will they live happily ever afterwards?” It simply isn’t the point of the fairy story and it isn’t the point of this war.
Presumably we won’t live happily ever after this war. But just as a fairy story helps to increase a child’s awareness and wonder at the world, so this war may make us more aware of one another. Perhaps we shall learn, and perhaps some things will be better organized. I hope so. I believe so. But only if we engage in this war with our hearts as well as our minds.
For goodness’ sake let us stop this empty political theorizing according to which a man would have to have a University degree in social science before he could see what he was fighting for. It is all so simple, really, that a child can understand it.”
Below is a translation of the last letter he wrote to his mother, and actually the last words he ever wrote.
Willem to Olga van Stockum, 7 June 1944 [Translated by Engelien de Booij; this was shortly before Willem took off on his last flight from his Yorkshire RAF station, bombing a bridge over the river next to Laval, France.]
“Dear Mother, I am curious to know whether you have noted the date of my last letter. I cannot tell you how great the satisfaction was to be one of those who dropped the first bombs during the invasion. Officially we did not know it would start on June 5th, but the instructions we got, the mysterious doings, our route and what we could expect while in flight, made us fairly sure that this was The Day. We did our job in difficult circumstances, although there was not a very big opposition. … I am free tonight and am glad of it, for the strain is great and we had not a moment’s rest in the past days. Our kind of job needs hours of preparation, the operation itself takes 6 hours and after that debriefings, etc. Then a meal, to bed, sleep, and again preparations. Of course, we did not know beforehand it would be rather easy, and the nervous strain makes your breathing faster. Soon it will be worse, when the Germans get more information. But I would not want to miss this time for anything, and I am very thankful that I resisted the temptation to go to the other station, where Bierens de Haanals10 is, for then I would be now between two squadrons and perhaps have missed all this. My crew is perfect, calm, matter of fact, and one cannot find any signs of being nervous. I sometimes have the feeling I am the only one who is…. but perhaps they think the same thing of me. I have the feeling there is an enormous energy in everybody and even the B.B. (body building programs) are better and more imaginative. The whole station comes out to see us off when we take off, with their thumbs up and this is a pleasant feeling. I know how you and Hilda enter into my feeling now, and this is an invigorating feeling. [Note from Engelien – I cannot find the rest of this letter, unless the following fragment is the continuation, but this seems not very probable.] My roommate [at the air station in the UK – Yorkshire?] is a Belgian pilot aged 40 who doesn’t speak English [or Dutch], and with whom I spend much of my time, which is very good for my French. If only you could hear all the fantastic stories people tell, more interesting than the most terrible spy thriller!! My friend came here a few months ago here after having been in the Belgian underground movement. Did I write you that I saw in London Aunt Mia [Tante Mies?] quite often? We sympathized with each other about our tastes in literature. We talked about Dostoyevsky and she told me that you had written such a wonderful article about him. How nice there are people who remember this. I would like to see it some time. I long to read it. Very, very much love from your son Willem”
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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It is strange how things can come full circle. My first real blog was about an event during WWII in my hometown of which I was blissfully ignorant about, until I stumbled upon it by accident.. I came across the story of Frieda Goldschmidt-Jakob which actually ties into that story.
On October 5,1942 the RAF accidentally bombed the town of Geleen in the Netherlands. They mistakenly thought it was Aachen in Germany, which is only about 25 km away from Geleen.The bombing resulted in 83 being killed, 57 houses totally destroyed , severely damaging 227 more house and causing further damage to another 1728 homes.
Frieda Goldschmidt-Jakob and her husband lived on Groenstraat 7. which also functioned as a shop.
(the building in the middle is No 7.)
During that RAF bombing the Goldschmidt’s house was one of the homes which were hit and were destroyed. However they both survived.
Frieda and Joseph Goldschmidt fled Germany in 1936 and moved to the Netherlands where they setlled in Geleen . The oldest son Louis fled to the Netherlands in 1934, it is not known where exactly he moved to. The 2 oldest daughters also moved to Geleen in 1936, The 3 youngest children Alma , Hubert and Irene Initially moved to Utrecht and then moved in with their parents in Geleen in 1937.Irene moved to a different address in Geleen
Frieda’s oldest daughter Elsa and her husband Adolf Markus managed to emigreat to the US in 1940.
In 1941, new laws restricted the movement of Jews Hubert and Alma were transported to Toulouse in France. Frieda and her husband Joseph did not need to move because of their old age Irene was deported to Poland . When Frieda and Joseph’s house was bombed they moved into Irene’s house
On 9 April 1943 Joseph and other remaining Jews in the province of Limburg were sent to Vught and a few weeks later to Sobibor via Westerbork, He was immediately gassed when he arrived in Sobibor, aged 75.
All the stress must have got the better of Frieda because she became ill and rather then to be sent to Vught she was sent to a hospital in Maastricht by ambulance. She died in Maastricht on October 7 1943, age 74 just over a year after her house and shop was mistakenly bombed by the RAF.
It is believed that Hubert and Alma Goldschmidt and Elsa and her family have survived the war.
De Groenstraat is the street I often walked across to get to town centre, in fact it is actually where the town centre starts. Yet another placed I passed by daily and never knew the significance of the place. I had to immigrate to Ireland to discover these things.
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On May 5,2019 on the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. One of the heroes who contributed to this liberation passed away aged 103.
Like me he was Dutch and like me he had a love for Ireland and we both ended up making this emerald isle our home. But where I am merely a simpleton ,writing about history. I could only aspire to even reach 10% of the man Major Linzel was. He a true hero.
The WWII veteran had moved to Ireland in 1978 after he, his wife Marianne and their teenage son began holidaying in Glengarriff , in Co Cork five years earlier and fell in love with the locality.
Major Linzen was the last survivor of the Royal Dutch Air Force that tried to repel the Luftwaffe when Germany declared war on the Netherlands on May 10, 1940
Born in Stadskanaal, a town of the North Eastern province Groningen the Netherlands on December 7th 1915, He always had a keen interested in flying and, after joining the Royal Dutch Air Force in May 1938, was attached to a fighter squadron at Ypenburg when Germany declared war on the Netherlands on May 10th 1940.
He shot down two German fighters before being hit himself and bailing out with a bullet wound in the leg.
In an interview with the Irish Times , 3 years ago he recalled that ‘dogfight’, in his Fokker DXX1
“I saw the silhouette of an aircraft that I had never seen before… I then saw the German markings and gave a short burst – a very bright violent flame came out of its right engine and then black smoke – it went down straight away,” he recalled.
“I climbed up again and saw a large formation of Heinkels in the direction of the Hague – I dived down to on the hindmost right aircraft and fired everything I had at close range – I am sure I hit it but I did not have time to see the result.
“When I pulled away, a bullet came through the floor and exploded in my thigh – there was a lot of blood and I started to feel faint. I threw off the hood and bailed out – you have no idea how quiet it is when you are hanging in the air.”
Landing in a field of cows, Major Linzel lay there wounded for almost two hours as a local dairy farmer reckoned he was a German paratrooper but when the farmer finally approached, Major Linzel told him that he was “as Dutch as your cows over there”
He was taken to a hospital together with some German pilots, were he was discharged after 6 weeks.
Undeterred, he joined the Dutch Resistance before making his way to Britain,via Switzerland, France, Spain and Portugal,in 1943 where he joined the RAF with whom he flew almost 100 sorties.
Members of the Royal Netherlands Air Force gathered in a quiet country graveyard in West Cork on Thursday,May 9th.2019 to honour one of the last of their famous May Fliers who defended their country against the Nazis.
Majoor Linzel, Rust in Vrede en bedankt wat U voor uw Vadeland en Koningkrijk gedaan hebt.
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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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I don’t know why but ever since I moved to Ireland I have found myself explaining my name quite a bit. I have been called Derek,Declan,Kirk and other variations.Nowadays I usually say “Dirk like Dirk Bogarde” it mostly takes another few minutes for people to get my last name right. Most people will have heard of the actor
He was a British actor although his Father was of Flemish ancestry.
Although I do mention his name while explaining my name to people. I have to be honest. I am no Dirk Bogarde. I wish I was for he was not only a great actor he was also a formidable human being.
I will not go into his acting career but will focus on some of his activities. During the war, Derek Bogarde served in the British Army, at the start with the Royal Corps of Signals before in 1943 being commissioned at the age of 22 into the Queen’s Royal Regiment as a second lieutenant.
He served for a while at RAF Medmenham a unit specialized in photographic intelligence. in the Army reconnaissance section as a visual inspector. Analyzing aerial photographs using special glasses to create 3D effects.
The unit played a pivotal role in gathering intelligence on the V1 and V2 programs.
Bogarde was one of the first Allied officers in April 1945 to reach the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, this experience had the most profound effect on him and about which he found it difficult to speak for many years afterward. In an inteview he described what he saw. He got the dates wrong, the camp was liberated on the 15th of April.
“I think it was on the 13th of April – I’m not quite sure what the date was” “when we opened up Belsen Camp, which was the first concentration camp any of us had seen, we didn’t even know what they were, we’d heard vague rumours that they were. I mean nothing could be worse than that. The gates were opened and then I realised that I was looking at Dante’s Inferno, I mean … I … I still haven’t seen anything as dreadful. And never will. And a girl came up who spoke English, because she recognised one of the badges, and she … her breasts were like, sort of, empty purses, she had no top on, and a pair of man’s pyjamas, you know, the prison pyjamas, and no hair. But I knew she was girl because of her breasts, which were empty. She was I suppose, oh I don’t know, twenty four, twenty five, and we talked, and she was, you know, so excited and thrilled, and all around us there were mountains of dead people, I mean mountains of them, and they were slushy, and they were slimy, so when you walked through them … or walked – you tried not to, but it was like …. well you just walked through them, and she … there was a very nice British MP, and he said ‘Don’t have any more, come away, come away sir, if you don’t mind, because they’ve all got typhoid and you’ll get it, you shouldn’t be here swanning-around’ and she saw in the back of the jeep, the unexpired portion of the daily ration, wrapped in a piece of the Daily Mirror, and she said could she have it, and he” [the MP] “said ‘Don’t give her food, because they eat it immediately and they die, within ten minutes’, but she didn’t want the food, she wanted the piece of Daily Mirror – she hadn’t seen newsprint for about eight years or five years, whatever it was she had been in the camp for. … she was Estonian. … that’s all she wanted. She gave me a big kiss, which was very moving. The corporal” [MP] “was out of his mind and I was just dragged off. I never saw her again, of course she died. I mean, I gather they all did. But, I can’t really describe it very well, I don’t really want to. I went through some of the huts and there were tiers and tiers of rotting people, but some of them who were alive underneath the rot, and were lifting their heads and trying …. …. trying to do the victory thing. That was the worst.
“After the war I always knew that nothing, nothing, could ever be as bad … … but nothing could frighten me any more, I mean, no man could frighten me any more, no Director … … nothing could be as bad as the war, or the things I saw in the war.”
Dirk Bogarde truly remarkable man.
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This is one of those men that makes me proud to be Dutch, and like me he has also a connection with Ireland.
He was born in Hattem, a small town in the east of the Netherlands. His father was an officer in the Dutch Navy.
Willem studied mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he earned a gold medal.
He continued his studies in Edinburgh and Toronto where he received an M.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh. His main academic achievement was to solve Einstein’s field equations for an infinite rotating cylinder. His work is regularly cited by those interested in time travel.
Van Stockum moved to the USA in hope of becoming an understudy to Albert Einstein.
Eventually in the spring of 1939 he gained a temporary position under Professor Oswald Veblen at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
The outbreak of World War II happened while he was teaching at the University of Maryland. Eager to join the fight against Hitler and Fascism, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, where he eventually earned his pilots wings in July 1942.
Because of his advanced knowledge of physics, he spent much of the next year as a test pilot in Canada. After the Netherlands was invaded by the Nazis, van Stockum sought to join the war as a pilot.
He moved to Britain in the spring of 1943 and and in 1944 became the only Dutch officer posted to the no. 10 squadron at RAF Melbourne in Yorkshire.
On 10 June 1944, van Stockum and his crew of six took off on their sixth combat mission, as part of another 400-plane raid. Near their target, the plane was hit by flak, and all seven crew members were lost, along with seven from another bomber on the same mission. The fourteen airmen are buried in Laval, near the place where the planes went down.
Ending the blog with the last line he wrote in an article about his decision of becoming a fighter pilot.
“For goodness’ sake let us stop this empty political theorizing according to which a man would have to have a University degree in social science before he could see what he was fighting for. It is all so simple, really, that a child can understand it.”
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On this day 75 years ago the Gloster Meteor, the first British jet fighter and the Allies’ only jet aircraft to achieve combat operations during WWII, made it’s first flight. Neill Michael Daunt was the first pilot to fly the Gloster Meteor on March 5 1943.
Despite Germany’s technological advantage, the Meteor was the first operational jet fighter in the world. It became the history-making plane after beating the Me 262 into squadron service by a few days.
The first unit to fly with the Gloster Meteors was RAF No.616 Squadron. They received the first of their jet fighters on July 12, 1944..
While the Me 262 saw action against Allied aircraft over Germany, the Gloster Meteor began its service career against the V-1 Flying Bomb, and despite the best efforts of its pilots never had the chance to prove itself against the Luftwaffe..
Although I am a bigger fan of the Spitfire and Mustang, I have to admit the Gloster Meteor does look like an awesome piece of aviation.
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I am not an aviation expert and even less of a military aviation expert, far from it. But that is what makes the Spitfire so special. Despite my ignorance in all matters aviation I do know what a Spitfire is, and like me anyone who doesn’t have a clue about airplanes they still will recognize a Spitfire.
Although there have been many other majestic fighters during WWII like for example the Mustang.
It is the Spitfire which is most recognizable of all of them. As I said earlier everyone knows how a Spitfire looks like.
The Spitfire was designed by Reginald Mitchell of Supermarine Ltd., in response to a 1934 Air Ministry specification calling for a high-performance fighter with an armament of eight wing-mounted 0.303-inch (7.7-mm) machine guns.
One of the Spitfire’s most important contributions to Allied victory was as a photo-reconnaissance aircraft from early 1941. Superior high-altitude performance rendered it all but immune from interception, and the fuel tanks that replaced wing-mounted machine guns and ammunition bays gave it sufficient range to probe western Germany from British bases.
In late 1943 Spitfires powered by Rolls-Royce Griffon engines developing as much as 2,050 horsepower began entering service. Capable of top speeds of 440 miles (710 km) per hour and ceilings of 40,000 feet (12,200 metres), these were used to shoot down V-1 “buzz bombs.” During World War II.
Spitfires were exported in small numbers to Portugal, Turkey, and the Soviet Union, and they were flown by the U.S. Army Air Forces in Europe. When production ceased in 1947, 20,334 Spitfires of all versions had been produced, 2,053 of them Griffon-powered versions.
Fighter versions of the Spitfire were dropped from RAF service during the early 1950s, while photo-reconnaissance Spitfires continued in service until 1954.
It is not often I bestow the title of Hero to a non human, but in this case I think it warrants to name that ruler of the skies a hero.
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History of Sorts 
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