🇳🇿WWII uncovered: New Zealand Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mayston: 485 NZ Spitfire Squadron: Veteran of D-Day.

"We went out in the first light, before the dawn. We were lucky; although there was other cloud the east still had this glow, and we could see down below the darkness of the land and the shiny surface of the sea, and the light was getting better every minute of course, and then dawn broke, and we saw this immense armada of ships in the semi-darkness.

It was awesome, and there were the hundreds and hundreds of landing craft, loaded up with men heading towards the beaches, all in nice neat lines and order. It was awesome, there's no other word really.

And something that we'd been looking for, and here it was happening" - Maurice Mayston interview by Alison Parr. Ministry for Culture and Heritage D-Day Oral History project.

New Zealand spitfire pilot, Flight Lieutenant Maurice Mayston (pictured left) and R.H. Le Tourret back from a fighter sweep over France in the days before D-Day.

"Maurice Mayston was a fighter pilot with 485 NZ Spitfire Squadron.

On D-Day his squadron shot down the first German bomber over the Normandy battlefield, and quickly followed it with a second.

From then until August 1945, Maurice was on continuous active service and was based in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Mayston was awarded the Legion d'Honneur, France's highest military honour, for service on D-Day and the Normandy Landings." - Ministry for Culture and Heritage

Flight Lieutenant Maurice Colgan Mayston passed away on 20 October 2019 at the age of 98 years old.

don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Comments

A great story about a little bit of 'humanity' during a terrible war.

A great story about a little bit of 'humanity' during a terrible war. In April 1945, 2nd Lt. Peter During was a South African fighter pilot (N.7 Squadron) running missions over Italy when his Spitfire was shot down by German AA fire. He managed to crash land his plane behind enemy lines where he was immediately captured. Whilst been escorted to a German Lufwaffe Prisoner of War (POW) camp (he was a pilot and thus his interrogation and imprisonment was the responsibility of the German airforce), he opened a conversation with his captors. He was quickly able to establish that they could already see the writing on the wall, that the war was at an end and Germany would lose it. ...

French woman accused of sleeping with Germans during the occupation has her head shaved by vindictive neighbors in village near Marseilles.

French woman accused of sleeping with Germans during the occupation has her head shaved by vindictive neighbors in village near Marseilles. Antony Beevor wrote: "... In Paris, there were cases of prostitutes kicked to death for having accepted German soldiers as clients. (...) A large number of the victims were prostitutes who had simply plied their trade with Germans as well as Frenchmen, although in some areas it was accepted that their conduct was professional rather than political, others were silly teenagers who had associated with German soldiers out of bravado or boredom. In a number of cases, female schoolteachers who, living alone, had German soldiers billeted on them, were falsely denounced for having been a "mattress for the boches. (...) Women accused of having had an abortion were also assumed to have consorted with Germans. Many victims were young mothers, whose husbands were in German prisoner-of-war camps. During the war, they often had no means of supp...

After the end of world war 2,this letter was found in nazi concentration.

After the end of world war 2,this letter was found in nazi concentration camp,which contains following message adressing the teachers. Dear Teacher, I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: Gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated illeterates. Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more humane. Don't forget to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

WORLD OF ALL

Search This Blog