Benjamin's Grandpa

It still amazes me how events in our family's living memory are history to others.

Benjamin and Bridget were at a friend's house the other evening. This friend and his father are mad about aeroplanes and the conversation must have steered to the Second World War (it was actually the Pacific War that they'd been talking about). Benjamin mentioned this at home and I said that Grandpa and Grandma had been in the Second World War. This must have impressed him. The next day he mentioned it to a friend at school who was disbelieving enough to want to check the story out with me.

I relayed this to Grandpa via email with the following response

"now let him tell his school friend that his Grandpa remembers three things which happened in the FIRST World War. My Daddy held me up to the front bedroom window on a dark dark night; and I saw a burning German Zeppelin going past to its crashing site a couple of kilometres up the Great North Road. One Saturday morning, I stood outside the front door with the old gentleman next door; and looked up to see 12 German bombers going up the Great North Road after bombing London. At 11o'clock on 11th November 1918; my Mummy was taking me up in a factory lift in London, when we heard the sirens (maroons, we called them in those days) which told us the war had finished."

Priceless. From burning German Zeppelins and maroons to email. Who would have thought.