Seventy Years ago!!!!

Hi guys and gals    Well, yes, I see that the celebrations for the D-Day Landings are being most impressive.   I suppose celebrations is correct in one big sense of the word because - albeit after quite along time - that remarkable effort achieved so much; but the loss of life has to be remembered very differently.   I have my own personal memory of that date.   I think it must have been the evening before, because either the terrific noise of aircraft must have wakened me or my parents got me out of bed to see what was going on,   We were living  inland, in Gloucestershire at the time, and I think Double Summer Time (daylight saving time) was in operation -this meant even more hours of day light for farmers, and it didn't get dark until about 11 at night.    The three of us looked out of one of the front upstairs windows of our house and the planes were going over in huge droves  - yes really huge ones.   There were quite a few US bases in that area of the UK, and  at that moment  no announcement had as yet been made on the BBC's Home Service or their Forces Programme.   My Dad's voice still rings in my ears as he several times said   'There's something big going on'  My Mum's re-assuring response was 'Well at least they're their ours'!'    Obviously  they were mostly American !  What had been  a constant cry earlier in 1941 when the Plymouth blitz was raging was how one could tell by the sound of the planes where they were 'ours' or the dreaded 'theirs' !   Yes we were usually right - the sound was totally different! Plymouth UK is some 150 miles South West of where we were living in Gloucestershire at the time, due to my Dad's war work.   So yes, I can definitely say that the night  before the 6th of June 1944 was a night I well remember - little though I was !