-: My father began very, very poor,
and really, genuinely made something of himself within the
RAF, and in his life, my father applied, I think just
this gumption and this idea that you can do anything,
even if apparently you cannot.
And in his life, he was extraordinarily successful,
but, and we only understand it now, throughout his life,
would suffer
terrible mental breakdowns
at periods of great stress, or loss in his life.
And we never understood.
That fragility just didn't make sense in this bear of a man.
And,
having been taken through his war record and
really having seen how he suffered,
he suffered extraordinary PTSD
after the Battle of Heligoland Bight.
Now the RAF never abandoned him.
I visited the sanitarium that he
went to after the war, but they never abandoned him.
They always took him back, they took care of him,
and that is how my father was in his life.
There was not a sparrow or a person that he did not
wrap in a blanket if they needed it.
That he didn't take care of, that he wouldn't nurture
back to life if they were in trouble.
It was a lifelong aspect of him that again,
we loved but only really made sense
after we found everything out.