I don’t know why I never added 2 and 2, and realized that my grandfather was employed by the military.
Looking at the photos, always in civilian clothes, reading my mother’s diary, no mention of anything remotely to do with the military, I always thought it was a civilian effort to reestablish a German aerospace industry. Silly me.
Watched a documentary about the British Lancaster Bombers. That brought up a lot of interesting points:
They were talking about sinking the last remaining big German battle ship that the Germans had stashed away in Tromso Norway in 1944.
I know my father was in Tromso. Wonder what his role was in all that.
I also for the first time thought about what branch of the military he was in. I think the navy. He had a thing for the ocean. He took a trip on a ship up to Norway, all by himself without us, in his old age. He asked that his ashes be scattered at sea.
One time the British were heading out on a bombing raid to Germany right about the time when the Germans were flying in for a bombing raid of England.
The British decided to wait and not engage. The Germans dipped their wings and flew on.
I go to kill yours, and you go to kill mine.
Line from a poem of a rear gunner on a Lancaster;
“And when I died they washed me out with a hose.”
In the documentary they are flying a Lancaster, the big British 4 prop plane. Reminds me of the 4 prop plane that evacuated us from West Berlin in 1960. A US plane.
Apparently Churchill came to regret Dresden. Very soon. Even before the war ended.
The British too interned foreigners during the war: Germans, Austrians and Italians.
If my mother had not been married to Ehrenfried, she may not have come through the war in one piece. Or at all.
Hence – no Susanne