b.loree said:
My father was a Lancaster mid upper gunner so no souvenirs unfortunately except a German infantry button given to him by a Brit POW. His crew picked up returning POW's after wars end. They also dropped food supplies to the Dutch in Operation Manna.
Wow, Brian! "Operation Manna" saved the life of my (then pregnant with what would become me) mother when she and more family members were close to dying in the aftermath of the "honger winter". Many's the time she told me about the excitement when the Lancs came flying over at a height of maybe a hundred feet, dropping food stuff... real
food! I have reason to be
very grateful to your father and his mates! I wouldn't be here without them!
The Lanc has always intrigued me. Halfway the last decade (y'know, the days when I could still afford to collect - grin) I was an eBay affiliate with a lot of online affiliate stores. One of them was dedicated to selling Lancaster stuff... instruments, yokes, documents, all kind of "things Lancaster". It was my favourite site out of probably some fifteen where I sold just about anything, from scrap gold via hybrid cars to toilet bowls and general aviation stuff. And then, after some years... eBay decided to get rid of the vast majority of their affiliates, because their own fame had grown sufficiently for them not to need the (rather well-paid) "middle men" anymore. Can't blame them... they could keep the affiliates' commissions in their own pockets from then on.
And there went my income! Gone! From good sweet money to absolutely zero in one day. I deleted the suddenly useless sites of my "eBay empire"
, but some of them I kinda miss... like the Lancaster site. It was fun: researching, writing articles for it, making it attractive to buyers... good times!
So yes... the Lanc has a big place in my heart, although by now I have only got a picture left of the digital one in my MS FlightSim which irretrievably crashed (the sim/computer, not the Lanc
). I made most of the panel myself, used to be one of my other hobbies.
Again: much thanks and respect to the memory of your father! He and his mates are still remembered with love and respect by the older generation here in the Netherlands... and by the likes of myself who weren't born yet but still owe their lives to them.
On the cemetary less than ten minutes walking (even with my bum leg) from my house there's a row of graves where fifteen or twenty (mainly Lancaster) pilots and crew men are buried. Every time I visit the cemetary (half of my family's there by now) I walk past their graves. A late aunt of mine, my father's oldest sister, was a matron in the hospital where some of them were cared for - unfortunately in vain. She has seen terrible things. On a lighter note: until the day of her death she insisted that in the row of graves two men were mixed up: a Mackay and a MacKey (grin)! She knew exactly when both died, and she was totally sure that the date of the one is on the headstone of the other, and vice versa.
Anyway: salute to all Lancaster crew!