I shall write about World War Two today. I can’t find anything that happened on this day to connect with Sir Anthony Standen. However, on this day in 1944 my father was experiencing stormy weather and heavy fighting for Caen in Normandy. Caen is on the right of Dad’s battle honours, after Arromanches and Villers-Bocage.
Dad might not have had to fight the remaining battles, if Claus Van Stauffenberg had been successful in his assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, also on 20th July 1944. Stauffenberg was awarded the Iron Cross First Class after his service in the invasion of France. Stauffenberg then moved to Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. In November 1942 the allies landed in North Africa and Stauffenberg transferred to the Afrika Corps, so he may have been opposite my father at some point.
I posted a review of my favourite book, The Last Enemy, in Readers Club, some time ago. Richard Hillary wrote The Last Enemy. He was a Spitfire pilot who was badly burnt in the Battle of Britain. The pioneering plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe, treated his face and hands at Queen Victoria Hospital East Grinstead. An association called the Guinea Pig club was formed for McIndoe’s patients on this day in 1941. Hillary fought his way back to flying fitness only to die in a night flying accident. Meanwhile, in the Pacific theatre, US forces landed on Japanese occupied Guam.
Around this time in 1941 the German army had advanced to within 200 miles from Moscow. By July 1944 the Soviet army had destroyed the German 4th Army along with most of the 3rd Panzer and 9th Army. There would be much more death and destruction, but the writing was on the wall for Hitler, by this point in World War Two. I wonder how the race for Berlin would have gone if Stauffenberg had been successful.