80 years ago, on June 6, 1944, Flt Sgt Ron Chapman was 5,000+km from the Normandy D-Day landings. Stationed in Egypt, he was probably ‘cheesed off’.
He had been overseas two and a half years, with no end in sight.
His diary for 1943, on which my ‘Blighty Thank God’ podcast series is based, reflects how being away from home for so long was hard.
One of the things getting to him and his colleagues was that while they were enduring diseases and unbearable heat – troops from all over the world were arriving in the UK as part of the invasion build up.
In the diary he reports one resentful colleague felt ‘foreigners’ were enjoying themselves in the UK while British troops were fighting overseas.
Since leaving the UK, he had almost been killed when his fuel-starved plane crashed, he witnessed a good friend die when his plane plunged into the ground – and there were other colleagues who died horrible deaths. All detailed in the podcast.
When the D-Day invasion began it was a sign that going home to Blighty might become a reality.