A Few Special Pictures

[FoolTrottel]

Some pictures, and some words to go with them...

 

A tree in a small village some 20 miles from my hometown.

 

A small sign below it states it's a 'Liberation tree', planted nearly 70 years ago, when the Canadians liberated this small town (named 'Hoog Soeren') on April 17th 1945.

 

Nice people back then, them Canadians.

Much nicer than them Germans, back then.

 

Next, a picture I took from a painting. The painting was shown in the local modelers' shop, in the display window, so the quality is not optimal.

The painting was made recently, by some local artist.

 

It shows my hometown, getting bombed by the RAF, in Mitchells.

I guess they had been aiming for the road bridge on the lower right... missing it yet again... hitting the city yet again ... oh well... 

 

What I find special about it - apart from it being my hometown - it shows two Mitchell's, and this is exactly what my Dad was so afraid of back then: Mitchells in pairs in the skies above. They were known to drop bombs... at the age of about 10-12 he even wanted to hide in shelters when he was out and about, not in the city, not near any possible target... he still wanted to hide when he saw those 'koppeltjes' (as he called them in Dutch, meaning 'pairs')

 

 

[DD_Arthur]

 

What I find special about it - apart from it being my hometown - it shows two Mitchell's, and this is exactly what my Dad was so afraid of back then: Mitchells in pairs in the skies above. They were known to drop bombs... at the age of about 10-12 he even wanted to hide in shelters when he was out and about, not in the city, not near any possible target... he still wanted to hide when he saw those 'koppeltjes' (as he called them in Dutch, meaning 'pairs')

 

 He was worried by 'planes flying about looking for stuff to drop great lumps of exploding ironmongery on?

 

 That would seem a fairly reasonable thing to worry about.  It worked though;  you exist FT!

[DD_Bongodriver]

Still, I can't imagine how tough life must have been when occupied by the Nazis and your liberators are bombing the crap out of you, hats off to our continental cousins, they endured a horrifying nightmare.

[Painless]

It's a messy business Arjen, the real life equivalent of a "Friendly Tank Destroyed" I guess.

That is a very skilful painting , does it have a title ..."FFS" perhaps ?

P.

[DD_Arthur]

Wow, look at the date the tree was planted.  Montgomery has attracted a lot of flak these last sixty years, some of it well deserved - most not - but he really did make a balls up in Holland.

[BadAim]

Glad your Dad was good at dodging bombs, Arjen!

[FoolTrottel]

So, just today, I happened to be back in the same area, and took a stroll through the woods 'round there.

 

 

But, the path I had been followed suddenly ended, so I just kept walking in the same general direction, as there appeared to be a road a bit further on.

 

 

As you can see on the picture, there were some signs put up there, I approached them from their blind side.

So, I got to that road, turn round and got to read them signs...

 

 

Thanks very much for not putting up them signs on the other side of the wooded area, the part where I entered it...

 

In short: There used to be a German Ammo depot in the woods there.

There's been some efforts after the war to clean it all up, but the area is not clean yet... So one is advised to stay on the paths ... and not venture off them.

 

 

 

Oh well, I saw nothing, heard nothing, and could continue my walk just fine... 

Darn, that would be so nasty, getting killed by WWII some seventy years later 

 

[DD_Arthur]

Luckily we don't have much like that over 'ere, FT.  However, we do have plenty of nuclear waste stored in rather dodgy conditions in remote and unimportant parts of the country - or "Oop north" as we soft southerners would say  - and we do have this; 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

 

I can't really see what they could possibly do to dispose of this thing now.  The chemicals in the explosive will have broken down into some really nasty, volatile compounds.  Moving anything is out of the question. 

If this really did detonate - well, I expect our men of Kent would certainly hear a bang!

[Sweper]

Nice read FT. Have missed this. You´re going back to your roots, kind´a (haw haw..) Like the story I told you earlier it is easy to forget what your parents (and their dads and mom´s) had to go through. Kinds of wierd that your allied and friends had to bomb the crap out of their friend´s cities to be able to shake hands again. Sort of.

 

Arthur, isn´t it at your place they dig out 2.000 pounders from under the streets once in a while?

[DD_Arthur]

 Kinds of wierd that your allied and friends had to bomb the crap out of their friend´s cities to be able to shake hands again. Sort of.

 

Arthur, isn´t it at your place they dig out 2.000 pounders from under the streets once in a while?

 

You are right, Swep but.......it was called the Transport Plan and it involved the dislocation of the railway system in north eastern France, Belgium and Holland.  The allies bombed railway junctions, bridges, anywhere they could create a bottleneck to disrupt the rail system and prevent the Germans bringing in supplies, reinforcements or heavy units to face our armies in Normandy.   It was successful but in the spring of '44 it cost the lives of several thousand civilians in these countries.

 

Large unexploded bombs used to be fairly frequently uncovered in the UK but these discoveries have become much fewer in recent years.  I believe large bombs are still being dug up in parts of Germany on a weekly basis.

When I was a kid, anti-shipping mines were still being hauled up out of the coastal waters of the UK by local fishermen.  If you've been for a walk along the seafront at Folkestone you might have passed one now being used as a letter box by our post office!

[Painless]

A related story....

Portsmouth Dockyard has one particular basin which has around 30ft of sediment mud in it . My m8 who used to be clerk of the works for the Dockyard said they will never dredg it because it has so many bombs , shells, and nasty chemicals from WWII , WWI, and earlier, it will never be cost effective to do so!

P.

[Jabo]

When I was a kid, anti-shipping mines were still being hauled up out of the coastal waters of the UK by local fishermen.  If you've been for a walk along the seafront at Folkestone you might have passed one now being used as a letter box by our post office!

 

 

Never saw the one at Folkestone, but I remember there being (a defused) one on the quay at Mudeford on the south coast (near Bournemouth) where we used to holiday when I was a child.