Today I’ve chosen another book published by a museum. I have a fondness for museum publishing because the books are accessible to the general reader, the quality of reproduction is fabulous and although they are expensive in museum shops they are, of course, cheaper second-hand; charity shops come into their own here.
But I have to admit, I’d call this a boys’ book. I’m embarrassed to be caught making these sexist assumptions. Please shout me down. Prove me wrong.
This is a book by a brigadier, documenting the D-Day experience and sub-titled “We fought in Normandy”. It is, no doubt, competently written as the author was a well-known military historian, and the book is designed to inform and intrigue. Many pages have little pockets containing maps, extracts from diaries, reproduction newspapers, copies of contemporary leaflets and more. There are web-links and there’s a CD with veterans’ accounts of their experiences; this book is doing its very best to help the reader experience the events described.
But it reminded me of a childhood experience of my own. I was at my aunt’s house in London on a Sunday at tea-time. We were sitting round the table: lace table-cloth and home baking. I remember my mother was there and my father’s three sisters and they were reminiscing about the war, sharing (for the first time, I think) their experiences.
One aunt spoke of being evacuated to Kent with her primary school and later of her fire watching duties, up on the roof during the night while the bombs fell on London. Another told us about working as a telephonist for Buckingham Palace hearing secrets she never, ever revealed. Another talked about of being evacuated with her young family to Wales and her son’s first language being Welsh. And my mother spoke of her days in a hospital in Venice where, as a nurse, she had no time to worry about the bombing because every time the air raid alarms sounded, all the patients called for bed-pans, and by the time she had dealt with them all, the danger had passed.
And then one of my aunts asked an amazing question: ”Who was bombing you?”
My mother’s reply, “You were. The British,” was followed by a long silence. It wasn’t an awkward, embarrassed silence; it was deep and thoughtful. I remember, even then as a child, feeling grateful for that experience.
The D-Day Experience by Richard Holmes is on sale at Oxfam Wilmslow for £9.99.
If you had read the first Sookie Stackhouse novel when it was published in 2001, you would have had to have waited 12 years, until this month, to reach book 13 and the end of the series.
