THE RAF OF THAT SUMMER 80 YEARS AGO

In the spring of 1940 my father, Jack Simpson (1920-2006), was a 19-year-old Royal Artilleryman. On the road to Dunkirk his adventures included twice narrowly avoiding enemy tanks as well as hiding in a ditch within feet of German soldiers. During two and a half days on the beaches he found himself immediately underneath a diving Stuka and, on another occasion, standing shoulder to shoulder with a man who was killed by a shell splinter. He eventually came home on the sloop, HMS Kingfisher.

THE MEMORIES

Dad would hardly talk about his wartime experiences, which also included First and Second Alamein and the landings at Salerno and Anzio, until much later in life.

When he opened up a little, one of the questions he was asked was, ‘What did you see of the RAF while you were at Dunkirk?’ The answer was, ‘I never saw the RAF’.

A similar theme was apparent when the New Zealand Spitfire ace ‘Al’ Deere wrote his memoirs, entitled, . He had forced landed in Belgium and, with the help of three soldiers from the Royal Army Service Corps, made it