PERSONAL

I have often wondered why I bother doing this blog; but I have never even entertained the idea of giving it up!  The answer struck me this morning when I accidentally uncovered the flying log of my own Uncle Jack (who was not Polish) and I read it properly - for the first time.  He was a nice, gentle, man who I cannot envisage as a fighter. 

He always told me that he was only in the war "for the last five minutes" because he was too young to have  been a hero.  He said that the most dangerous thing he ever did was "chuck tinsel (chaff) out of bombers to confuse enemy radar and the worst injury he had suffered was varicose veins caused by spending time in draughty and unheated aeroplanes."

That was not strictly true!  This morning I discovered that he was only in the war for the last few months but that he had flown 13 (!!!) operational missions as a Flight Engineer - all of them over Germany - in Halifax or Lancaster bombers.

This is typical of the men of all the Allied Air Forces (and probably the Axis Air Forces too).  Ignore the politics and look at the men who had to do the fighting and you will see why I continue to do it.