Category: Blog
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D-Day: Sgt Major Stan Hollis VC
Sgt Major Stan Hollis, of the 6th Green Howards, advanced with his men several hundred years inland before being pinned down by a German pill box. Hollis single handedly attacked the pill box, for this and other acts of bravery that day he was awarded the Victoria Cross. His citation reads. “In Normandy on 6 June 1944…
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D-Day: CBS Announce Invasion
The first news reports of the landings in France on the 6th June 1944 were from German radio stations. Then around 0400 EST CBS broadcast the official confirmation flashed to them from London at 03:33, from Eisenhower’s headquarters announcing the invasion.
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D-Day: Landings
Robert Edlin was a member of the 2nd Ranger Battalion that joined the first wave of the assault on Omaha Beach. We join his story as he his assault craft becomes mired on a sandbar: “Our assault boat hit a sandbar. I looked over the ramp and we were at least seventy-five yards from the…
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D-Day: Eisenhower’s Speech
Against a tense backdrop of uncertain weather forecasts, disagreements in strategy, and related timing dilemmas, Eisenhower decided before dawn on June 5 to proceed with Operation Overlord, D-Day. Later that same afternoon, he scribbled a note intended for release to those 175,000 men and women of the expeditionary force. Polished and printed this became “Order…
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D-Day Remembered
I’m conscious of the fact it is the 70th Anniversary of D-Day this year, and we’ve never actually done a podcast looking at the topic, its such a big topic we will cover it, though probably over numerous episodes. Meanwhile I thought it might be interesting to gather first hand accounts of the day that…
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Leo Gradwell
We couldn’t recount all the exploits of each Arctic convoy in the last podcast and we highly recomend watching the recent BBC documentary looking at PQ17. But one man we’d like to highlight is Leo Gradwell, below is the Wikipedia entry which sums up his extraordinary exploits: “At the outbreak of the Second World War,…
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Squeaking Wheels
Cycling home from the office last night it struck me how many people seemed to have nice bicycles but had failed to oil them, one after the other they squeaked past. I’m sure I’ve read somewhere, or perhaps seen it on the TV (The World at War perhaps?), that during the fall of Singapore in…
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Merry Christmas
We would like to take take the opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
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We need you…
We’ve now finished our 150th episode and closed season 15! So our eyes turn to season 16! We received a great script from Daniel Sargent (who wrote last seasons excellent German Auxiliary Officers during the AWI) looking at the Belgian Congo, though slightly off topic for us I thought it not only interesting but touched upon…
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Me and Kipling
I don’t recall ever doing Kipling at school (the writer not the chap who makes exceedingly good pies), and I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly sat down to read any, but whilst writing some of the podcasts certain lines come to me which upon investigation are from Kipling. The first time this happened was when…