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Dodging the enemy... and celebrating victory
Frome Standard
|May 08, 2025
D-DAY hero Jack Mortimer chuckles as he remembers belting out Moonlight Becomes You in front of hundreds of people during VE Day celebrations overseas.
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The 101-year-old, who was a driver and dispatch rider with the 12th Ordnance Beach Detachment, recalls attending a “great big dance” close to where he was posted in Antwerp, Belgium, as they celebrated the end of the Second World War.
He'd cheekily volunteered a pal to be the pianist and in revenge he was forced to get up in front of colleagues and locals to sing Bing Crosby's classic
It was a welcome relief for them all as they had been terrorised by the doodle bugs or buzz bombs - the V-1 flying bombs used by Nazi Germany.
"We just watched them go over... when the engine stopped, we waited for the bang. They were mainly aimed on the docks but some fell on villages along the path to the docks.
"One came really close to where we were billeted, just two streets away. Antwerp was hit harder by the V-1s, than London was. I remember vividly there was a block of flats with a quad in the middle and the V-1 went right in the middle and imploded. We had a rough time taking people away from it, more than 200 died. It was horrendous.
This story is from the May 08, 2025 edition of Frome Standard.
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