John A Silkstone
17-01-08, 23:28
I've just received the following from an army friend.
Silky
Every other movie which hits our screens these days seems to be about the last war - a war in which the ALLIED armies fought and won - but it is ALWAYS from an American perspective.
I mean absolutely NO OFFENCE to my US friends who I hope will enjoy this e-mail - but if Hollywood is to be believed, then it was purely an American war, won by the American army and involving only Americans. Why, the other day, I spoke with a young man of about 20 and he said that he was unaware that the British (let alone the Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, Indians, Ghurkas, South Africans) had been in the war; he knew that because of all the war movies he had seen !
Let me, slightly, redress the balance with a story of a Brit, a story only just released following his recent death at the age of 88.
I would like to share with you, the remarkable story of a world war II British officer - or a Rupert as we former soldiers called our betters. Lieutenant Stan Jeavons was a young man of 25 and, with D-Day approaching, was informed that he wouldn't be allowed leave to see his equally young wife, Nancy who had given birth to a baby boy the previous day.
As he flew by military plane to join the rest of his regiment on the south coast, prior to the British and Canadian airborne assault on the left flank of Normandy - the Americans assaulted the right flank - he casually asked if the plane was near the west Midlands. When he was informed that they were, he casually opened the exit hatch of the Dakota and bailed out, and parachuted to the ground !
Several hours later, he arrived at his home in Coseley, Dudley and found two military policemen waiting for him. When they challenged him, he tapped his loaded 9mm Sten gun - an automatic weapon, hated by the Brits because it had no safety catch, misfired at critical times and was wont to fire when accidentally dropped - and informed the two Red Caps, that they could do it '....the easy way or the hard way....' Something about this desperate man's manner told them that discretion was the better part of valour and they let him go inside to hold the baby.
He got his 5 minutes with his newborn son and was then arrested and taken straight to his camp for court martial and the inevitable prison sentence. As luck would have it, the next day was June 5 and in the early hours of June 6, his seniors, realising that he was far more use in Normandy than in front of a court martial in southern England, allowed him to jump with British 6th Airborne and Canadian Airborne into the Orne-Caen area of France.
Typically of the man, he led the way and was the first British officer to parachute into occupied France and begin the liberation of Europe. The British, Canadians and the Americans suffered 40% casualties during the Normandy drops, incidentally.
He later jumped with British 6th and the US 17th Airborne into Nazi Germany as they spearheaded the Rhine crossing the following March.
After 6 decades of secrecy, the story finally became public when Stan Jeavons passed away at the age of 88. His son said: 'Had he been killed, I would have known that he had held me, kissed me and told me that he loved me. This was one of the greatest treasures of my life.'
A wonderful story of a wonderful man, a very British war hero.
Silky
Every other movie which hits our screens these days seems to be about the last war - a war in which the ALLIED armies fought and won - but it is ALWAYS from an American perspective.
I mean absolutely NO OFFENCE to my US friends who I hope will enjoy this e-mail - but if Hollywood is to be believed, then it was purely an American war, won by the American army and involving only Americans. Why, the other day, I spoke with a young man of about 20 and he said that he was unaware that the British (let alone the Canadians, Aussies, Kiwis, Indians, Ghurkas, South Africans) had been in the war; he knew that because of all the war movies he had seen !
Let me, slightly, redress the balance with a story of a Brit, a story only just released following his recent death at the age of 88.
I would like to share with you, the remarkable story of a world war II British officer - or a Rupert as we former soldiers called our betters. Lieutenant Stan Jeavons was a young man of 25 and, with D-Day approaching, was informed that he wouldn't be allowed leave to see his equally young wife, Nancy who had given birth to a baby boy the previous day.
As he flew by military plane to join the rest of his regiment on the south coast, prior to the British and Canadian airborne assault on the left flank of Normandy - the Americans assaulted the right flank - he casually asked if the plane was near the west Midlands. When he was informed that they were, he casually opened the exit hatch of the Dakota and bailed out, and parachuted to the ground !
Several hours later, he arrived at his home in Coseley, Dudley and found two military policemen waiting for him. When they challenged him, he tapped his loaded 9mm Sten gun - an automatic weapon, hated by the Brits because it had no safety catch, misfired at critical times and was wont to fire when accidentally dropped - and informed the two Red Caps, that they could do it '....the easy way or the hard way....' Something about this desperate man's manner told them that discretion was the better part of valour and they let him go inside to hold the baby.
He got his 5 minutes with his newborn son and was then arrested and taken straight to his camp for court martial and the inevitable prison sentence. As luck would have it, the next day was June 5 and in the early hours of June 6, his seniors, realising that he was far more use in Normandy than in front of a court martial in southern England, allowed him to jump with British 6th Airborne and Canadian Airborne into the Orne-Caen area of France.
Typically of the man, he led the way and was the first British officer to parachute into occupied France and begin the liberation of Europe. The British, Canadians and the Americans suffered 40% casualties during the Normandy drops, incidentally.
He later jumped with British 6th and the US 17th Airborne into Nazi Germany as they spearheaded the Rhine crossing the following March.
After 6 decades of secrecy, the story finally became public when Stan Jeavons passed away at the age of 88. His son said: 'Had he been killed, I would have known that he had held me, kissed me and told me that he loved me. This was one of the greatest treasures of my life.'
A wonderful story of a wonderful man, a very British war hero.