Chris, our paths seem fated to keep crossing (little ferry joke, there)! As you know, I'm from the North-East, though not quite as far north as L., but one of my many brothers has lived in Woodbridge for many years. He is a bell-ringer at Bawdsey church and I went there with him in January. However, what is probably more interesting is that my wife's step-father, who was a radar operative in the RAF, was stationed at RAF Bawdsey towards the end of the war, prior to going over to Germany after D-Day. He used to speak of pub-crawls in Felixstowe and desperate attempts to catch the Bawdsey Ferry back to base. It was apparently closed to civilians. What he didn't speak about was this:-
In 1944 a mock commando raid was staged at Bawdsey. RAF Bawdsey was warned of the attack and told of the approximate expected time of the attack. In the small hours the sentries on lookout saw a flotilla of rubber dinghies approaching the shore. The sentries had not been warned to expect a mock attack by friendly forces and so assumed it was the Germans. Bawdsey was prepared for an attack by sea and defences were in place. These consisted of drums of petrol which were anchored to the sea bed and which could be ruptured by explosive charges detonated from the shore. There were also machine gun positions along the cliffs. Once the oncoming dinghies were close to the shore the defenders detonated the drums of petrol which were then ignited by tracer fire from the machine guns. The invaders were incinerated . The question is who failed to warn the sentries of the impending attack. The event has been and still is covered by a `D Notice. (from Wiki.
Presumably the D-notice meant he couldn't, even if he'd wanted to.
Liked the shirt - is that from some event or other.......?
