Santo Domingo

View to the west - no more Andes, just
plain underneath the clouds

The wind was howling throughout the night and it was bloody cold. Julia had elected to sleep with me and that was a blessing (she’s like a little hot water bottle). Tom, who feels the cold more than I do, had gone to bed with a hot water bottle, socks and long johns.

Our job for the morning was to pack up as much as we could so that Jorge, who was coming up in the Toyota pick-up could load up as much as possible to bring back to Ambato, Quito, etc.

Lucy and her dad had a meeting in Simiatug. The health centre there has had a rocky record with a number of deaths in maternity. The problem is that people don’t like to use it because it’s gained a bad reputation, so they try to give birth at home and only go to the centre when they’re in trouble (and it’s possibly too late), so the reputation gets worse. An 18-year-old girl died in childbirth last week. It’s a vicious circle. Lucy and Carlos are trying to improve the message to local people to go there to give birth and also defend the centre from central government criticism.

The administration of the area is unusual for us – a mixture of central government, local community and private ownership. The colonial system of haciendas owned by remote people in Quito or abroad continued long after the Spanish were thrown out and independence gained. Gradually, people who were working as indentured labourers (little more than slaves) took back control of the land, sometimes by force (as in Simiatug). Lucy’s PhD is an account of the uprising and will be the first properly documented version of the events. The former hacienda land is now a mixture of property owned by the community and by private individuals. The community organisation operates as a type of NGO with some central government control/influence. I hope I’ve described that accurately; like I say, it’s not a concept we’d be familiar with. The British land grab was by the ruling class against the people in the Enclosures Acts, so quite the reverse of what happened in Ecuador.

Lucy went down to the meeting for 10am and Jorge arrived after 11am after dropping off Carlos in Simiatug and picking up Lucy. We’d load the pick-up, wait for Carlos to come back in the Montera, load that and then head back to Ambato.

There was a lot to go on the pick-up. We managed two settees, a large cupboard, super-king mattress, smaller cupboard, various boxes of food and pans and assorted soft-play equipment. Lucy took several bags of clothes and books down to the nursery for distribution.

It made a big hole in the house, but there’s lot’s more to take. Tom, Jorge and I will return next week to get the rest and it might need two trips.

We’d loaded everything we could, but Carlos had not arrived back, so we were stuck. During the afternoon we were kicking our heels. There’s no signal, so we couldn’t contact Carlos.

I had a bit of a wander around (see video). Santo Domingo is on a high shelf of flat land, surrounded on three sides by high mountains, but to the west, the land falls away sharply. Basically, this is the last high ground before the coastal plain. Look west and you see no mountains, just a bank of clouds covering the plain. It’s quite a remarkable view. I don’t know if you ever see the land or just the tops of the clouds.

Around the community runs a deep ditch, like a sunken road. It follows the mountains around and Tom says it was the boundary marker for the old hacienda.

I can’t understand why the relatively good buildings where Tom and Lucy are staying haven’t been utilised for living accommodation. Also, the furniture factory is just as it was when it closed down with all the machinery – drills, lathes and saws intact.

The community was established by Italians and Tom thinks there were accusations of communism which led to the leader and all the other experts having their visas cancelled. It’s a shame because the concept was quite visionary – a self-supporting community with the means to survive and thrive. They created a lake for fresh water all year (complete with fish), they planted pines to provide timber and they had a school and factory, with accommodation for the workers.

The lake is still there but many of the trees have been cut down to sell for timber (and not replanted). Some of the furniture can be seen in Tom and Lucy’s rooms – rather crude (but sturdy) chairs and benches.

During the day, several people called by to say farewell. Don Carlos, whose daughter provided child care help before running off with a chap from the next village; a group of children (Tom and Lucy taught some lessons in the local school) and an old lady with her daughter who came to offer us some beans. We went up to pick them in her fields (quite a climb) and Tom took this video.

Carlos arrived back around 5pm and Lucy and Aureliano went back in the pick-up with Jorge so she wasn’t too late. We loaded the Montera with as much as we could and Carlos, Tom, me and Julia headed back. Tom took a different route that was a little higher and more precarious than the way we came. He said Lucy didn’t like that way, but he thought it was quicker. There were lots of sheep, cows and other livestock on the road, but we made decent time. We had some wonderful views (see here) as we crossed over the pass and then, suddenly, the gravel road turned into the smoothest, metalled surface you could wish for.

That lasted about 15 minutes before the road through a deep valley and across countless bridges. The surface here was terrible with massive pot-holes. These were being repaired and the repairs were as dangerous as the holes, with big heaps of aggregate piled up in the road and no warnings. We got back quite late and Lucy had beaten us by about half an hour. It was a tiring day for her.

In the high Andes

Chimbrazo from the high pass.

My first view of Chimborazo - wow!

I've been hoping to see Chimborazo, the largest volcano in Ecuador, for the past few days but it has been quite cloudy. Tom thought we'd probably see it on the drive to Simiatug and he was right. The higher we got, the clearer it became and finally the whole, massive mountain was on show.

At 6,268 metres (20,371ft), it is absolutely awe-inspiring. It hasn’t been active since 550CE but the results of its activity are all around. The surrounding high plateau is strewn with rocks and as you drive on roads where they have had to cut through or into the rock, you can clearly see strata of varying depths from eruption after eruption. It’s like the cross-section of a massive layer cake.

Chimborazo makes you stop in your tracks and, in a country where there are geological wonders everywhere, it has to be pretty amazing to stand out.

We started the drive from Ambato where we are at about 2,700m and crossed a high pass on a dirt road at around 4,200m before dropping down to Santa Domingo at 3,530m (11,500ft). You can see some video from the high part of the pass here. We met some gringos (Americans) on horses near the top.

The drive is a sensory overload from start to finish. From Ambato, you’re soon into countryside, quite lush with steep valleys and with lots of people selling produce at the side of the road. It’s an age-old opportunist sales technique and exactly how Stilton Cheese got started on the side of the A1. We stopped on one stretch where there were around eight sellers (all offering vegetables). We bought potatoes, beans, tomatoes and some fruit.

We also passed a community market set up on the bottom of a valley where there’s a tight bend and some parking. I guess people have to slow down for the bend and can park up if they see something interesting. This sells everything, including meat. Fresh mutton would be cut off a sheep (recently butchered) and hanging from a convenient road sign – did that say “bend ahead” or “dead sheep”?

There are lots of trucks on the road and they don’t seem to worry too much about where they overtake. Driving can sometimes feel a little dangerous: click here. 

In one valley, there’s the home of Mushuc Runa FC, the football team of the indigenous people. Mushuc Runa means “new man” in Quechua and they get big crowds. The stadium is reached down a steep dirt road (I don’t think you’d get the Arsenal team bus down there) and on match day everyone parks on the main road, which is also steep and narrow, but at least is tarmac. Apparently, the man who owns Mushuc Runa heads the local produce co-operative and has two wives (sisters) who live in houses next door to each other just down the road. They are very nice houses by the local standard and I thought the one higher up the road was a bit nicer (she must have been the top sister). This local gossip, by the way comes courtesy of Jorge, who knows what’s going on around here.

You can’t believe how big Chimborazo is, pictures don’t do it justice. No wonder people decided these volcanoes were gods or the homes of gods.

We turned off a good road onto a dirt track to cross a mountain pass. The road wasn’t too bad (no need to engage 4WD today), but it can get tricky in bad weather. I’m not comfortable giving the car such a hammering and would have slowed down a bit, but the Mitsubishi Montera (now 19 years old) seems well suited to such an environment. It’s a V6 2.7-litre petrol and isn’t very economical, although petrol is only $1.83 per gallon – less than 40p per litre. Lucy was getting a bit shaken in the back and gets painful contractions with the rough road.

We came off the dirt road onto a metalled surface and then turned off again onto a dirt track to Santa Domingo.

Santa Domingo is 3530m (11,500ft) and it’s hard to breathe once you start ding anything physical such as climbing the stairs. The centre of the community is a church and square, surrounded on three sides by school, church, cheese factory and the abandoned furniture factory where Tom and Lucy got accommodation. The central square has pigs running around, dogs and llamas. In the morning, people bring milk to the cheese factory from surrounding smallholdings, they arrive with two plastic cans strapped each side of a llama.

We walked down to the nursery (you get free nursery care in the high Andes) where children were playing out. Lots of them know Tom, Julia and Aureliano. The toys are worn out and play equipment is old tyres and logs. There’s a steel climbing frame and some plastic slides which all went flying when there was a blast of wind.

The rooms they have been using are above the old furniture factory. There’s a big room which they have used as a playroom. It was the old school and when they went in the last lesson was still chalked up on the blackboard (quite spooky). They also have a living room/kitchen warmed by a wood stove, where there’s a sink, fridge and gas hob; large table with benches and two settees. They have a bathroom and large bedroom which had two doubles and a single bed. It’s warm enough when the stove is lit, but very cold without it (and in the other rooms). Drinking water is from an office-style water cooler, milk is bought from the cheese factory each day and has to be boiled before use.

A local man had set up an interview for Lucy with his 90-plus mother, who had direct experience of the Simiatug uprising and the seizing of the land from the hacienda owners. She was able to give Lucy a first-hand account (she lives on her own over 3,500m in a hut with her animals) and in exchange for helping set up the interview, Lucy had promised her son a copy of the video, so we set off to take it to him in the nearby town of Salinas.

It’s a drive of about 45 minutes and Salinas is a pretty place with a central square and busy streets. It’s also quite industrious, making cheese and an orange liqueur among other things. We bought some cheese and chocolate. The man we were to deliver the video to lived further up the valley from Salinas, along quite a narrow rough road. He wasn’t there, but Lucy left the data stick with his wife. It seems odd to leave a piece of modern technology with a woman in a rural shack, but why not?

We were back before dark and enjoyed a nice meal of beef, potatoes and onions cooked on the wood burner. I wanted to go out to see the night sky, but there were three sodium lights in the main square, so light pollution was worse than Thorney. It was also very cold and blowing a gale, so I wasn’t tempted to venture away from the community.

The terrible Ambato earthquake

Pictures from Time Magazine.

Our mission today was to get a birthday card for Margaret. It’s easier said than done (as I’m discovering), but Tom, Julia and I headed into Ambato central where Lucy thought we might get one in the Centre for Culture.

I’d only been into Ambato as far as the Mr Joy mall and that’s at the southern end, I guess. To reach the old city (with some colonial influence) you have to go down a steep hill until you reach the bottom of the valley where the Ambato River flows. The population was 180,000 in 2010 and it does seem about the same size as Peterborough.

The old colonial city wasn’t designed for cars and like colonial Quito, it’s a bit of a clash between old and modern … people and cars. We nosed our way through a series of narrow streets until we found a car park. Car parks are not like Peterborough with barriers and cash machines. It’s a patch of spare ground where something was knocked (or fell) down; you drive in and give them your keys. Cars are parked in a large block, so if yours is at the very back they have to move half a dozen to let you out. Actually, that’s a very extreme example and it takes no time. The keys are left on the windscreen and you get a slip of paper to reclaim your car.

We walked down towards the centre and passed the cathedral. Tom had never been inside, so we popped in for a look. The cathedral was completely destroyed, along with the rest of the city in a massive earthquake in 1949. This killed over 5,000 people and was a 6.4 magnitude. Around three-quarters of buildings in Ambato had to be demolished, but other areas were worse hit. The small town of Libertad was swallowed into a massive fissure, which sounds about as scary as it can get.

The new cathedral is quite modern in style and isn’t very big. On the steps are a number of people begging for cash. There are a lot of very poor people in the city, including many Venezuelans who are fleeing the economic collapse of their country under US sanctions. The USA should be a much better friend to its neighbours and work with them instead of trying to control them. The Venezuelans will sell you a 10,000 bolivar note for $1, the currency is worthless. Other people will offer you a sweet in exchange for cash, it’s a small way of trying to preserve your dignity – you’re not asking for something for nothing. Unlike beggars in the UK, who are often addicts or mentally fragile, these people are just unlucky and poor. In a poor country, to stand out as being poor, you are absolutely poverty-stricken.

There was no gift shop in the cathedral and the cultural centre turned out to be a series of rooms where workshops are held. We went into the city museum, which turned out to be an art gallery. It had some strange Inca-erotic paintings, but no gift shop. An erotic Inca-inspired artwork card might have been ideal.

Tom got his shoes shined by an old man, whose skin resembled the leather of the shoes he was polishing, Julia enjoyed chasing pigeons in the park and we were eventually directed to a shop that sold cards. They were heavily religious, not perfect, but suitable and brought them home to write.

I wanted Julia to write her name in one and for Aureliano to make his mark; I would send the other from me. Julia set to work with gusto and soon both cards were covered in felt pen, destroying some of the religious iconography. On top of that, the envelope had no stick, so I borrowed some of Julia’s glue. With her help, it will be a miracle if the cards can ever be removed from the envelope.

Tom wanted to drive up a very steep road he knew from where you could get a view of the city. It took a while to find it, but we did in the end and you do get an impression of what a steep valley the town is built in.

Some modern buildings look pretty good, there’s another mall under construction, but others seem as if they might fall down well before the next earthquake. There’s a lot of building, but no planning controls. If you’re building your house, it’s your right to build it however you like. Breeze block is the standard building material and often a house will have just the front rendered and painted, leaving the sides and back as Breeze block. People don’t seem to mind. The other common thing is to put in the reinforced concrete skeleton of a building of maybe three storeys and only build the ground floor, the rest has to wait until there’s enough money.

To a tidy north European mindset, it’s very troubling, but here the practicalities of life and making things work on a tight budget are the priority.

Later in the afternoon, we went back into town to post the cards and to get some cash for Lucy. Instead of parking, Tom went round the block (the old colonial square). We went round three or four times, creeping through three sets of lights. Eventually Lucy emerged. She said the main in the post office was an idiot and, if she hadn’t been able to go in front as a pregnant woman, she would have been in there an hour. I don’t know if that means our cards won’t arrive!

Joy costs $15 an hour

Ambato, or at least the part of it where I’m staying is at 2710m and I do have to keep stopping to take a deep breath. I guess I just need a week or two to get the red blood cells up to muster.

This morning, we went into town to the shopping mall to visit Mr Joy with Tom and the children. Mr Joy is an indoor play centre, including soft play for younger children. It’s on the top floor of the shopping centre and is expensive even by UK standards at $15 for an hour for two children and two adults (only one of which could go on the slides – that was me). It seems soft play is very much for the middle class here, not so in UK if Big Sky is anything to go by.

Again, there were lots of attendants. Each themed area had its own attendant and unlike the UK, there were lots of dressing-up clothes and outfits. The Princess Palace had a rail full of Disney dresses and the soft play area had police and firemen’s outfits. Julia really liked the rainbow slide, which involved a long flight of steps and was something of a challenge for grandad who was struggling with the altitude. Perhaps a dozen trips up the rainbow slide is just what I need to get acclimatised. We left after an hour, but it turned out that because Lucy has Mr Joy membership (oddly, it’s only $1 to join) you can get an extra hour for $1. I’m not sure I’d have lasted another hour on the rainbow slide.

In the afternoon, we went back to the mall to go shopping with Lucy and Julia. There’s a large supermarket just like any you’d see in the UK, but with a slightly smaller booze section. The sort of Chilean red that we’d buy for a fiver in the UK would be $15 here.

The car park has special places for pregnant women and for old people as well as the usual disabled slots. If there were old people places in Sainsbury’s, they’d need to dedicate half the car park for them. I wanted to buy a card for Margaret’s birthday. I was assured that sending mail from Ecuador is much more reliable than sending it to Ecuador, so I thought I’d give it a go. Cards are not a big thing in Ecuador (you’d tend to visit someone on their birthday, also the internal post is useless) so the supermarket doesn’t have a big section. As it happened, the few they had were removed for a back-to-school promotion.

An assistant said there was a Hallmark card shop in the mall, so while Lucy queued at the till (a special till for pregnant women) I went to hunt for a card. Where Hallmark had been, there was a black curtain, so no joy. There was a large bookshop but that didn’t have any cards.

At the supermarket, you can pack your shopping into bags in your trolley and a man will push it down to your car and lift them into your boot.

Breakfast in Quito, dinner in Ambato

It’s nice to be in Ecuador, I had a good sleep and woke up to hear Julia and Aureliano. They were so happy to see me, it was lovely. Julia won’t leave my side and Aureliano is just excited by the whole thing.

It’s good to see Nidia again, she’s been so good to us and she looks really well. She is staying at her sister Margi’s house while hers is being built and she has a self-contained flat on the ground floor. I remember the house from Tom and Lucy’s wedding, we went there for a welcome party to meet the family.

My welcome breakfast was pan de yucca and eggs; and it was also great to have a shower. After breakfast, we went to park in central Quito, where there’s lots of family attractions, including a boating lake and electric cars. We took two pedalos around the lake with Tom, me and Aureliano in one and Emelia, Nidia and Julia in the other. There are fountains in the lake which weren’t working when we set off, but which switched on unexpectedly and soaked Nidia, Emelia and Julia. I may have been quite comical had we witnessed it and if Nidia hadn’t been quite so mad.

We set off for Ambato in the afternoon. There are a few new roads in Quito and it takes ages to leave the city. It’s stretched out long and thin in the valley below Pichincha volcano and we were travelling from the north of the city to exit at the south. It seems to have grown since I was here five years ago and some of the developments seem precariously perched on the side of crags. In a land susceptible to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, some of them seem like very dangerous places to live.

On the trans-American highway, we were able to get a good view of Cotopaxi as the clouds gradually shifted from its slopes. I wonder if I would ever stop being stunned by the view.

Tom and Lucy have an apartment on the top floor of a building at the Foundación Alli Causi hospital and they have a lovely garden and lots of space for the children to play in. We met Carlos, Jenny, Arlen and Camila later in the evening (they’d all been to Baños for the day). My Spanish is OK for straightforward requests and orders, very simple conversation, but it isn’t good enough to converse with non-English speakers in everyday complicated conversation. I hope it might improve a little while I am here.

To Quito, via Mexico

I’m in the first-class lounge at Mexico City Airport, it’s 5am. I’ve just got off an 11-hour flight from London Heathrow and I feel better than I should. The flight was on time and not too bad considering. I couldn’t sleep and watched three films – The Boy Who Would Be King (for children), The Favourite (excellent) and Gone Girl, which I’ve seen before but still enjoyed immensely.

I was flying AeroMexico and the plane – a Boeing Dreamliner – was really nice. People were trying to sleep in all kinds of positions. The chap opposite had his head in the aisle and, at one stage, was kneeling on the floor with his chest and head on the seat. I was glad to get off, but a cold airport at 4am isn’t the nicest of places. I went out through immigration into the airport to have a look around, but there was little to see, so I went back through security and into the departures lounge.

I’d upgraded to business class for the flight to Quito (I got a £150 deal) and so I could use the First Class Lounge – free food and drink, wi-fi and comfy seats. Mexico City is 2250m high and I didn’t feel short of breath, but I was peeing a lot. I don’t think I’ll be much below 2500m for many days in the next month.

One thing that struck me was the number of people doing jobs that just wouldn’t be done in England. The men’s and women’s toilets both had an attendant, who opened the door for you and handed you paper towels. The floor in the lounge was constantly being swept by three different people. There must have been 11 people working in the lounge alone. My Spanish was proving adequate for requests and simple questions, but I almost came to grief when I asked for the wi-fi code. I used the Spanish wee-fee pronunciation and the noun codigo, but they call it ‘why-fee’ (god knows why). The chap thought I wanted a whisky. Lucy said she would ask for the clave (not codigo) and el internet instead of wi-fi.

A couple of hours before my flight was called I went for a wander around the airport. There are so many flights to US cities, clearly lots of Americans come here for holidays. There were also lots of Chinese people. Donald Trump should be careful with his anti-Latin American rhetoric – the Chinese will end up owning central and south America.

I arrived in Quito at 11pm on Saturday night, having been travelling almost 36 hours with no sleep. It was great to see Tom and Emelia waiting for me and great to see my bed for the night at Margi’s house where Nidia is staying at present.

Memories of my dad's war

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day landings that led to the liberation of France, Belgium and Holland and the ending of the World Wars of the 20^th Century.

My dad, Eric Rayner, didn’t hit the beaches on the first day. He put his boots on French soil (or rather sand) at Gold or Sword beach (I’m not certain which one) on D+a-day-or-so (again I’m not sure).

I should have talked more to my dad about his war, but mostly he was never particularly forthcoming. I have a job on my to-do list to properly research his war record but have not yet got around to it, so these are my memories of his memories. I wasn’t taking notes, so some of this needs to be verified.

The best time to get dad to talk was after a shared event. We watched the film The Longest Day with John Wayne and that gave some opportunity to ask questions (my dad didn’t think the film gave a particularly accurate account of D-Day). The best talk we had was when we visited him after we’d had a family holiday to Normandy. I wish I’d made a quick return trip with dad. The trouble is you think you’re all going to live forever and there will be time next year – not so!

I know my dad served in the Northumberland Fusiliers initially and was then transferred to the Middlesex Regiment (I don’t know if this was before or after D-Day). He was in a heavy machine gun (Vickers) and mortar group and drove universal carriers. He took a lot of interest in my Airfix models of Bren Carriers (another opportunity for a small boy to ask questions).

My dad and his comrades had been embarked on troop carrier some time ahead of D-Day, which was then postponed for a day due to bad weather. Of course, they didn’t know where they were going or when. His memory of this time was of seasickness. Lots of people were seasick. He said they’d been sitting out in the Bay of Biscay getting tossed around in the storm, they had to stay below decks and they were constantly frightened of being torpedoed by a U-boat.

I never got a Saving Private Ryan gritty reality of fighting from my dad, but he did talk about all the dead horses and cows, their bodies bloated by decomposition, that lay scattered among the fields of Normandy. I think he thought it particularly unjust that they were dragged into the conflict.

The only time I remember him talking about human bodies was when we came back from France. I had a large-scale map of where we’d been and he wanted to try to locate Hill 112, a fierce battle in the push to take Caen that had cost many lives. He said Hill 112 was a fortified strongpoint dominating a strategic crossroad. His group had been involved and they had moved through the battlefield the following day before the bodies had been removed. I think that brought home to them what might happen. We never did find Hill 112, but the battle is well documented and it’s one of those tasks I need to get around to.

Land mines were a constant fear and must have been an enormous stress. He did have a lot of respect for the Germans, including their landmines. There was one that they called a jumping jack, which flew up in the air before exploding, so it caused a number of non-fatal shrapnel wounds to a larger number of people (the thinking being that you can leave a dead man, but you have to look after a wounded man). There was also a mine placed in the road that wouldn’t go off when the first vehicle ran over it; it might take five or six. For drivers of lightly armoured universal carriers (like my dad) this would have been a constant fear. You didn’t only have to worry if you were the lead vehicle …

Dad was massively impressed by the scale of German fortifications. He couldn’t believe how they’d done so much in such a short time and what a waste it all was. If only all that effort had gone into a peaceful purpose.

The allied ‘weapon’ he was most impressed with was the self-heating soup. Troops were given tins of soup with a pull-string at the bottom. You pulled the string, which must have released a chemical into a compartment and heated up the soup above. He couldn’t understand why they weren’t made in the present day. I suppose that working on building sites after the war, he’d have seen a good use for that.

He spent some time after the invasion on the outskirts of Caen, which the Germans were determined to hold onto. Dad said there were huge warships in the Channel firing their 15in guns into the city. He said you’d see the flashes at night and then hear the sound of the guns – like lightning and thunder – you’d then hear the shell making an oscillating whistle as it passed overhead. In the daylight, he said it was fairly easy to see the shells in the air. The navy and air force were two areas where we had the edge on the Germans and rocket-firing ground attack aircraft like the Typhoon were a welcome sight.

He also witnessed the bombing of Caen by the RAF, raids which reduced this mediaeval city to ruins and, ironically, made it harder for the attacking troops trying to negotiate the rubble.

He’d spent some time outside Bayeux and was interested when we gave him an account of seeing the tapestry.

Being in a machine-gun company, he was interested in the pros and cons between the German Spandau and the British Vickers. The Spandau had a more rapid rate of fire, but was air-cooled. The barrel soon became white hot and would warp and jam if it wasn’t allowed to cool. The Germans would get around the problem by changing the barrel (which took just a few seconds) while the British Vickers had its barrel encased in a water jacket and could fire for extended periods, an hour or more when they wanted to lay down supressing fire. The water would be circulated into a separate reservoir in a can and the water would boil if they were firing for an hour or more. Dad’s mortars were single tubes and fairly small bombs. The Germans had a six-barrel Nebelwerfer mortar, which fired rocket-assisted bombs and which the allies called Moaning Minnies because of the wail they made. They were notable weapons for their theatrical noise, but I don’t think dad feared them like he did mines, regular mortars or 88mm guns.

He told me one story about a day they had just arrived in an orchard when they came under mortar fire. There had not been time to dig trenches so they hit the deck. Dad said that it was very scary because the bombs were exploding when they hit the tree branches and shrapnel was being blasted more widely as a result.

When the barrage finished, one man didn’t get up. Dad said there wasn’t a mark on his body, but a piece of shrapnel had gone up him bum and killed him. I don’t know if that is true.

Earlier in the war, dad had volunteered as a glider pilot, but hadn’t been accepted. I found it hard to think that my dad would have done such a crazy, dangerous thing. He said lots of his mates had volunteered. I’m quite glad he wasn’t chosen. There were heavy casualties among glider crews and they would have been among the first troops to land on D-Day.

The winter of 1944-45 was bitter cold and dad spent part of it in Belgium billeted with a family. They had a young daughter, whose company he enjoyed (I guess she was a similar age to his sister Joan). He said they were very grateful and although they didn’t have much food themselves (half Europe was starving) they insisted on giving their meat ration to the soldiers. Dad said he thought the meat was horse, it was as tough as old boots, but because of their sacrifice they had to eat it with gusto. I hope they were able to leave them some army rations.

Dad crossed the Rhine from Holland into Germany. It was very wide, he said, but he had no sense of what was happening. The allies had laid down smoke for days before and it was like a think smog when they went across. This memory was sparked by another Airfix model – the Buffalo amphibious troop carrier. He’d crossed the Rhine in a Buffalo.

As they got into Germany, they met more Germans. Once when entering a farm to make sure it was clear, they saw a trapdoor in the barn floor. They thought there might be troops inside and prized it open with bayonets with hand grenades ready. It was the farmer and his family who’d gone down there seeking safety. They were convinced the British would shoot them, that was the German propaganda.

Dad finished the war in Hamburg, a city where his grandfather had come from. Hamburg was a ruin, everything was rubble, but there was still a Woolworth’s sign clinging on to one of the shops.