This memoir is in memory of an extraordinary human being who lived his life with incredible optimism and positivity. My husband, William (Bill) Thomson, was a remarkable father to Craig, Alison and Alistair and was such an inspiration to us and to people he knew. I want to express my profound gratitude to Bill’s friends, business associates and schoolmates who obliged in contributing to this memoir so that it could be completed. We couldn’t have made this happen without you. I would like to specially mention Brian Britton, Christine Brooks, Alison Thomson-Chaput de Saintonge, Habib Farris, Ron King, Philip Mappin, Barbara Suzuki, Alistair Thomson, Craig Thomson, Ken Waller, Rick Adkinson. My name is Jeannette Thomson and I’ve lived most of my life intertwined with a man whose eccentricity, opinions, and remarkable journeys have left an indelible mark on those fortunate enough to have come across him – (or unfortunate enough should you dare to disagree with him)! NOTE: I WILL BE POSTING A FEW CHAPTERS OF OUR MEMOIR ON THIS PLATFORM…so stay tuned guys!! Chapter 1 – Born into War All stories are supposed to have a beginning, but where does a life story begin? Should it be at birth, or is there a prequel to the birth to give it some meaning? That’s a bit metaphysical so I will give both to provide some context, in case anyone is interested. I entered the world on 10th August 1939 at the Royal Northern Hospital on Holloway Road near Islington. The buildings of the Royal Northern are still around but they are now luxury apartments. The hospital was merged with University College Hospital London in the 1950s, sometime after the creation of the NHS (National Health Service) in the post war period. My parents had only arrived back in England the previous month from Palestine, where my father was serving as an officer at RAF (Royal Air Force) Ramleh. Ramleh was a small, mostly Arab and Christian village at the time, but is now a large town in Israel called Ramla. My father had been in the Middle East for about three years after joining the RAF in late 1935. All families were being repatriated to the U.K. in the summer of 1939 anticipating the beginning of World War II, which duly commenced on 3rd September 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and triggered a mutual defence agreement between the U.K. and Poland. I was three weeks old and there is absolutely no proof that Hitler went to war on account of my arrival. I believe, though, my mother chose the Royal Northern because it had a good reputation and she was anticipating a difficult delivery with me. She had good reasons – her first child, a girl called Agnes, had been born in Ramleh a year earlier and had died after one day. The body was buried in the base cemetery, which is now looked after by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for the dead fromWorld War I, the inter-war years and World War II. By the time war broke out we were apparently living near King’s Lynn in Norfolk, my father having been posted to RAF Manston, I believe. I, of course, have no memories of those days. We didn’t stay there long. In 1941 we moved to Cannock in Staffordshire, where my father had been posted to RAF Hednesford, a training establishment; then, as now, Britain was critically short of the technical skills needed to run a modern, efficient war machine and the forces had to train their own. It is where I have my very first memory. I remember one night, as a two or three-year old, being taken to the air-raid shelter at the bottom of the garden and hearing the adults saying ‘They are bombing Birmingham tonight. I remember the words to this very day. It would be about the same time I was taken to Glasgow to see my grandparents for the first time. I remember looking up and seeing barrage balloons high in the sky, dangling iron cables, and asking what they were for. I was told they were to prevent the enemy bombers coming over the area. Otherwise, it seemed quite peaceful but the dockyards were nearby so they could have been a target. It was the spring of 1943 when we made our next move to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire and my memories from that time are quite consistent and continuous. Dad was posted to RAF Halton with a major training establishment for young apprentices in technical areas. Because petrol was severely rationed and transport was very difficult we had to move to the new house by stealth. Our furnishings were in a cattle truck with presumably farmers being able to get fuel more easily – and we followed in our Morris 8 with the headlights shrouded so as not to attract the attention of the police or enemy planes! The house was a large one on the A41, the main London to Oxford road, just outside Aylesbury, with a large garden and seemingly endless fields past the back fence where I spent much time over the following years as I was growing up. They seemed to a young lad to support an endless list of flora and fauna and certainly much more than today’s suburban youth ever experience. By 1943 the war was slowly turning in the Allies’ favour, and Aylesbury, being close to London and further south, was closer to the military buildup and preparations for the invasion of the Continent. It seemed all men were in uniform except the very elderly who served in shops – not that there was much to buy since food was severely rationed and the quality was very poor. Even eggs were rationed, and I remember the first food aid packages coming from the U.S. which contained powdered eggs and appalling, sickly, Carnation canned milk. Meat was especially difficult and I can remember my mother triumphantly bringing home a wild rabbit that a farmer had sold her: wild rabbits not being rationed. Beyond these things I do not have many vivid memories of that summer, but 1944 was a completely different matter. Several events stand out from 1944. The first was D-Day, 6th June, the day the Allied forces landed on the Continent and began the recapture of Western Europe from the Nazis. I remember that day – the sky was black with DC3s or Dakotas towing large gliders filled with troops who would land in France behind enemy lines and join up with those landing on the beaches in Normandy. Of course, I had no idea about any of this but the sheer volume of aircraft made the adults aware that something big was underway. It would have been around the same time that my mother took me on a trip to Ilford to see her sister, who had given birth to a daughter, Brenda. We travelled by train and bus and it was just another trip until there was a noise and absolute panic amongst the adults. My mother grabbed me and hurried me back home, saying,’I’m not coming to London again till this war is over.’ A German V1 rocket had landed in the general vicinity. These rockets were designed by a German scientist, Wernher von Braun, who escaped to America after the war and who I met one time at NASA headquarters in Washington DC around 1967. My aunt died soon after that trip from an infection and we looked after her daughter until the war was over and her father, Len Higgins, took her back. Mr Higgins and my mother did not get along so we lost touch with Brenda, to my mother’s regret. I started school in the summer of 1944 at Queens Park in Aylesbury. There was no preschool during the war, so the first few days’ adjustment was a shock for most kids. The war in Europe ended in May 1945 when Germany surrendered, Hitler having committed suicide in April in his bunker in Berlin as the Allies and the Russians closed in on him from the west and east respectively. The end of the war in Europe was called VE (Victory in Europe) Day, but the war in Asia rumbled on and only ended in August with VJ (Victory in Japan) Day, after the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to Japan’s surrender. We were on holiday in Swanage in Dorset at the time. There were no hotels or B&Bs available. We had to sleep in a large tent in a field and have our meals cooked over a paraffin stove. The beach could be used, but there was no going into the water because there were still metal spikes in the sea to hinder an oncoming German invasion. These were all gone by the summer of 1946, when normal beach holidays were again possible. But a few days after the dropping of the bombs in Japan I was at the cinema as a holiday treat and on the newsreel they showed the bombs and their blasts. There were great celebrations as the war ended, with marches as the troops returned home. The end of the war was truly the end of an era. Britain got a new government that year as Churchill was booted out of office, probably on the back of serving on the military vote. The men were fed up and just wanted to go home and have a normal service resume. The new Labour government was to transform Britain for the next 30 or more years, until another transformation began in 1979 with the election of Maggie Thatcher’s first government. For myself, I believe the war years, even though I was just six years and five days old on VJ Day, probably profoundly affected my views and attitudes for the rest of my life. I only ever bought one German car in my life, for instance, and that was solely because it was such a slam-dunk way to make money, but perhaps that story can be told in a later chapter. There is little to comment about during the rest of my childhood in the 1940s, the primary school years. My brother Donald was born in 1946 and I remember us picking him up at Harley Street one morning and driving home, stopping off for coffee in Watford, a place of no distinguishing characteristics except it later became the home of Elton John.