Lest we forget

I’m writing this early in the morning of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year, so of course I’m remembering. I’m an Army brat, so I had the privilege of living abroad as a child, and the town of Dortmund, where I lived for three years, holds a special place in my heart and my memory.

I was only six when we arrived, but my father felt that was quite old enough to learn the distinction between the Nazi’s and the Germans and how little choice most people get about the so-called big decisions. He felt strongly that none of us could know how we’d have felt if not obeying meant sentencing yourself and your family to death, but we should be very grateful that we weren’t likely to have to find out.

Ninety-eight per cent of the inner part of the city centre was destroyed in air raids, including the largest single-target raid of the war on March 12, 1945, which dropped nearly 4,851 tonnes of bombs. Oddly, I’d never thought of it as a city. I remembered how modern it seemed and how welcoming people were to ‘Die Kleine Englanderin’ as they called me and my two sisters. I also remember being shown the Reinoldikirche, which was badly damaged during the war and then rebuilt.

In 2016, nine neo-Nazi’s from various German cities occupied the church steeple and appeared to set off fireworks from it. They tried to yell Neo-Nazi slogans as well, but the vicar ordered the bells to be rung and drowned them out. I love that. I really, really love that, and it seems to me that we should all be drowning out the voices of hatred with love and happiness in tiny, everyday ways.

Closer to what is now my beloved home, today I shall walk down to the American Coast Guard Memorial on the Quay to remember during the two-minute silence, along with members of a World War 2 reconstruction group. This commemorates the Coast Guard Rescue Flotilla One that departed from Poole for the D-Day invasion in 1944 and honours the 60 cutters and 840 crew members who were credited with saving over 1,400 lives during the Normandy landings.  Again, I like that thought because I’ve always believed that life is about people, and, to quote Peter Cunningham in my Amy Hammond series, who, in turn, is quoting my father, who was another Peter, either everyone matters or no one matters.

On my way there I shall walk past the ruins of the old Powder House which was used as an air raid shelter, and remember how different the landscape was back then. In fact, most of it wasn’t there at all. Instead, there were marshy islands set amongst narrow sea channels where the pilot of a downed Nazi plane once wandered for hours while he tried to find someone to surrender to. I shall look at Brownsea Island and remember the amazing Decoy operation that helped to make sure that the bombs that should have landed on Poole and done as much damage as we did to Dortmund largely landed harmlessly on the Island. Yes, the raid was bad, but it could have been so much worse. I’ve written about that, and I shall carry on following Esther through the War and then on into the reconstruction process because I don’t ever want to forget the indomitable men and women who fought battles overseas and here on the Home Front. I had the massive privilege of knowing some of them, and if anyone thinks women needed liberating in the 1960’s then they’d clearly never met them! They played their part, and downtrodden was the last thing I’d ever dare to call them. Their role was simply different to men’s and I think it should be valued more, then and now.

So that’s me getting down off my soapbox, and, as an anticlimax, telling you about the books that are on offer this week at 99p in the Uk and 99c in te US.

It seems appropriate that four of them are the first books of my ‘Shadows’ series, which I write as Eleanor Neville, because they’re a little grittier and more violent than Tia writes. The Shadows are a department of British Intelligence that works behind the scenes and is judged by what happens. They do the weird jobs and are very complicated people, which I’ve always felt you’d need to be to be a spy and they are Fallen Angel, Haunted Angel,

Running Home and Running Scared

On a lighter note, there are my three Lucy Williams School Mum mysteries, Child’s Play, Fete Worse than Death and Snakes and Ladders. Widow Lucy works from home and brings up her daughter Gracie and specialises in dull. Once, she was someone else, doing something very different, but now she has to live under a new identity. She does her best, but old skills die hard, and trouble lurks in even the nicest places.

Which leads me to end by hoping you the nicest of days till we meet on Sunday, and promising you more Esther and Lucy next year.