My Dad landed on Sword Beach. He was in the Royal Electrical & Mechanical Engineers and posted to a regiment of the Huzzars as part of the tank maintainence workshop. One of the jobs he had done in the run up for landing was building the floating tanks. He was also a canny blighter who managed to get to the beach dry by hopping on the back of a lorry and telling his officer he was going along with it to make sure the equipment landed safely.
I wish he had lived long enough to see the recent documentaries about them that backed up what he's dais all along about why they lost as many as they did. If the message had got through to all the units that they had to go in closer before launch because of the sea conditions more may have made it. The ones he was with did.
He never spoke much of that day but one of my fondest memories of visiting friends he made on that mad dash across France to Belgium and watching them watching The Longest Day on French TV with subtitles and commenting on it. A lot of the comments were not exactly complimentary and along the lines of "the bloody Americans weren't there, I was" but it was one of the few times I ever really saw how he felt about the war.
Allen #58 said
"Alas - while I'd be quite happy to be a blood donor, I'm not allowed. It's not because of any medical condition, nor the fact that I've been to malarial zones, but because I lived in England for more than allowable time.
Evidently, England is crawling with mad cow disease, and since they can't test for it, they can't use your blood."
Well I'm a blood doner of 20 years standing (minus a few bits out for having teeth pulled and 2 kids)
and the lates rules for donation this side of the pond include a month long wait if you've been to the US between May 1st to November 30th because of West Nile Virus.
Here's the link to the Donor health check for the National Blood Service for anyone interested.
http://www.blood.co.uk/pages/c11xclud.html
I'm also registered as an organ doner since 1984 and on the British Bone Marrow Registry.
Wether any of it is usable or just too pickled is a problem for the doctors.
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