Autumn (Fall) leaves mean Remembrance Day, November 11 in the UK , will soon be upon us.
Since launching the ‘Blighty Thank God‘ podcast series 2 years ago it’s been downloaded over 2500 times. It’s an amazing milestone and only thanks to a lot of help.
It’s also amazing to think my father’s ‘voice’ – through his diary, on which the podcast is based – is still ‘heard’ after 80 years. It means Ron Chapman, a 23 year old RAF pilot and so many others like him who reluctantly went to war, can still tell us things that resonate today.
With a lot of research I was fortunate to be able to tell the stories I found inside the diary. But others aren’t so lucky. They don’t have the written documents I had.
What the series has done is prompt others to talk to me about their family histories, sharing what their relatives went through during the conflict.
Hearing those stories has been a tremendous privilege.
It also gives added poignancy to Remembrance Day, anchoring it in the reality of experiences real people went through as they fought for democracy and freedom, both of which I believe feel more under threat now more than at any other time in my life.
Image: ‘Over the Poppy Fields’, a painting by David H.