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War anniversary wins £7m party money from the lottery

from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)

Times

April 07, 2004

War anniversary wins £7m party money from the lottery

By Robin Young

BEVIN BOYS, Bletchley Park codebreakers and Land Girls were celebrating yesterday after news of a £7.3 million fund to pay for events to celebrate their contribution to the British effort during the Second World War.

The cash will be used for reunions, street parties, dramas and musical events between now and November 2005 as part of the Home Front Recall scheme, which is being jointly funded by the New Opportunities Fund, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Communities Fund.

The scheme will also help to pay for larger projects, including the development of an education centre at Bletchley Park, the wartime intelligence centre where the German Enigma code was cracked.

Separate funding was announced in February to pay for the British soldiers, sailors and airmen who defended their country.

Yesterday’s announcement is to honour the former codebreakers, firefighters, nurses, seamen, miners and others who served on the Home Front. “We all played our part,” Hilaire Benbow, a former sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), said. “That should be remembered by present and future generations.”

Bids for Home Front Recall funding will be invited from organisers at a local, regional and national level.

Liz Forgan, the chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund, said that particular attention would be paid to bids that helped to perpetuate the memory of the sacrifices made by the British people during the Second World War, by schemes that involved several generations.

Warwick Taylor, vice-president of the Bevin Boys Association, whose members were called up as young boys to work alongside regular miners during the war, said the Home Front Recall programme would fund a host of events and exhibitions. “This is what it’s all about, letting the younger generation know. We’ve got to keep it alive,” Mr Taylor said.

The Arctic Convoy veterans’ group will be applying for Home Front Recall funding to stage a final reunion in Portsmouth this year for British and German survivors.

Mr Benbow and seven other survivors were at the Imperial War Museum in Kennington, South London, yesterday for the opening of an exhibition devoted to the Normandy landings in May 1944.

They have all provided personal mementoes for display in the exhibition, which celebrates the biggest combined forces’ operation in history. Among the exhibits are secret briefing documents and papers written by General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery.

Mr Benbow, whose Distinguished Service Cross “for gallantry, skill, determination and undaunted devotion to duty” on D-Day is displayed alongside seven other medals he won, said that the exhibition revived poignant memories of June 6, 1944. At the time Mr Benbow, of Datchet, Berkshire, was a boat officer in a flotilla taking US Rangers to Omaha Beach. But his craft grounded on a sandbar and was swamped almost as soon as its ramp went down, leaving him and his crew to make their way under mortar fire until they found another vessel to take them back to Tilbury.

Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway, DSO, was also keenly interested in the exhibition. On the night of June 5, 1944, he was commander of the 9th Parachute Battalion of the 6th Airborne Division, dropped in Normandy to put the Merville Battery out of action before the seaborne troops arrived.

In the attack, Colonel Otway remembered, he was left with only 150 men out of the 750 troops who had taken off from Britain. “And, after the attack,” he added, “there were only 65.” He led his men to overrun the German battery, taking 23 prisoners. He said: “I think this exhibition is absolutely first class.”

The exhibition opens to the public today and runs until May next year. It is accompanied by a drama-documentary to be shown on BBC One.

THE LONGEST DAY

Operation Overlord was the largest seaborne invasion in history

15,000 American and 7,000 British troops were parachuted behind enemy lines by 2,395 planes and 867 gliders

132,715 troops and 10,000 vehicles landed

The invasion fleet comprised five forces, one for each landing beach

There were also French, Polish, Norwegian, Greek and Dutch ships

The Allies suffered 11,000 casualties on D-Day, of whom 2,500 were killed

There were 10,536 sorties by bombers and fighters, and 3,262 by transport aircraft, about one a minute for the 24 hours of the “Longest Day”

(posted 7293 days ago)

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