In the limelight

Exciting times! This is the actual, professional, press photographer who visited my house today. He travelled down from Cardiff for a photoshoot wielding a top-of-the-range Canon with a massive lens. Have I made the news? Not really but The Old Man has.

After his death three months ago I had 4 weeks to clear my half-brother's  home of fifty years so I scooped up a lot of stuff sight unseen to sort through at leisure. One of the items I discovered was a notebook containing an 8000 word account of his participation in the 1944  battle of Normandy  and the campaign to gain control of the enemy-held city of Caen: an offensive named Operation Epsom. I never knew this memoir existed. He never mentioned it, maybe he had forgotten it. Clearly written not long after the event it may have been a means to get it out of his head and on to paper. He had been a private in the rifle brigade and his company was involved in the bloody battles that centred on Hill 112, a slight elevation SE of Caen that acted as a crucial vantage point for whichever side held it: He who controls Hill 112 controls Normandy it was said. The Old Man survived unscathed physically but he lost many comrades and the experience took a psychological toll.

Having transcribed the text I sent it out to his circle of friends and relations, one of whom happens to be a free-lance journalist based in Paris. He immediately made the connection with D Day (June 6th) and the 71st anniversary of Operation Epsom later this month, and has used The Old Man's account as the centrepiece of a feature to be published in this Sunday's Mail [not a newspaper I would normally buy, it has to be said].

The Old Man would never have countenanced such publicity during his lifetime, being a modest and retiring sort who never celebrated his wartime role, but now he is gone I feel entirely justified in letting him step into the limelight for a brief five minutes of fame.

The press photographer  took pictures of the notebook, various papers, photos  and maps and the only souvenir The Old Man possessed which featured in this blip.