This is the story of the author evacuated in 1939 at the age of six with his brother and sister from Sheffield to the safety of relatives in Cork in southern Ireland and his return to Britain in 1943. The second part of the book covers two more war years in his home city all but flattened by the German Blitz of December 1940. It ends on VE Night 1945.
What this small boy gets up to in Ireland beggars belief. The author had an affinity with his Irish hosts and his four-year stay is not without humour. But the incidents he recalls include the firing of Cork’s largest department store, Grant's, in 1942 and providing the intelligence that may have caused the torpedoeing of the SS Irish Oak in May 1943 by the German submarine U-607. This incident of the sinking of a neutral ship prompted diplomatic exchanges between Britain, Ireland, America and Nazi Germany and almost brought down de Valera's government. The Irish section of the book ends with the boy, not yet ten years old, being interviewed by and deported on de Valera's personal order.
The young Neil's adventures do not stop there. The second part of the book includes a harrowing account of the 11-year old stowing away in a Lancaster Bomber piloted by his uncle on a raid over Berlin. By VE Night the young lad, now a precocious twelve-year old, has become more interested in girls, as you might expect.
We think the book is a classic in the genre of wartime memoires. We also believe it is unique in being recalled through hypnotic regression and thereby told through the eyes of the boy himself. The author was a practicing hypnotherapist for much of his working life and on his retirement revisited this period of his childhood seeking answers to memories and flashbacks that had haunted him for more than sixty years. He tells in his preface how this was achieved.
It is a one-off story told by a lad growing up too quickly. It is also one with dark undertones. You must decide whether he was an innocent used by the unscrupulous Republican agent Finnegan, by Sister Ann of “the Mission”, Stan of Short’s slaughter house, his wily cousin Clare who took his earnings for dresses and his uncle who took it for drink. Or whether he rose to the challenge of being separated from his parents at a very young age in difficult times. It is also an emotional story not least because of the shooting down over occupied France early in 1944 of the boy’s hero, Uncle Bill.
The Epilogue is a tribute to him, Wing Commander W. M. Russell DFC & Bar and the crew of Halifax LL 280 of 138 Squadron on its last mission out of Tempsford RAF dropping an SOE agent. An eye-witness account of the shooting down of the Halifax on the morning of 8 May 1944 is given by a young farmer's son.
What this small boy gets up to in Ireland beggars belief. The author had an affinity with his Irish hosts and his four-year stay is not without humour. But the incidents he recalls include the firing of Cork’s largest department store, Grant's, in 1942 and providing the intelligence that may have caused the torpedoeing of the SS Irish Oak in May 1943 by the German submarine U-607. This incident of the sinking of a neutral ship prompted diplomatic exchanges between Britain, Ireland, America and Nazi Germany and almost brought down de Valera's government. The Irish section of the book ends with the boy, not yet ten years old, being interviewed by and deported on de Valera's personal order.
The young Neil's adventures do not stop there. The second part of the book includes a harrowing account of the 11-year old stowing away in a Lancaster Bomber piloted by his uncle on a raid over Berlin. By VE Night the young lad, now a precocious twelve-year old, has become more interested in girls, as you might expect.
We think the book is a classic in the genre of wartime memoires. We also believe it is unique in being recalled through hypnotic regression and thereby told through the eyes of the boy himself. The author was a practicing hypnotherapist for much of his working life and on his retirement revisited this period of his childhood seeking answers to memories and flashbacks that had haunted him for more than sixty years. He tells in his preface how this was achieved.
It is a one-off story told by a lad growing up too quickly. It is also one with dark undertones. You must decide whether he was an innocent used by the unscrupulous Republican agent Finnegan, by Sister Ann of “the Mission”, Stan of Short’s slaughter house, his wily cousin Clare who took his earnings for dresses and his uncle who took it for drink. Or whether he rose to the challenge of being separated from his parents at a very young age in difficult times. It is also an emotional story not least because of the shooting down over occupied France early in 1944 of the boy’s hero, Uncle Bill.
The Epilogue is a tribute to him, Wing Commander W. M. Russell DFC & Bar and the crew of Halifax LL 280 of 138 Squadron on its last mission out of Tempsford RAF dropping an SOE agent. An eye-witness account of the shooting down of the Halifax on the morning of 8 May 1944 is given by a young farmer's son.
