A day of roses, cockleshells and the sea

I visited a rose garden the other week. Late October isn't the ideal time of year to do this of course. The sheer headiness and intoxication you get from inhaling the scents of  scores of rose bushes was sadly lacking.



There again, I hadn't planned this visit to the Southsea  Rose Garden. My daughter, husband and I were walking our three dogs along the beachfront on a sunny Monday morning....

 

 

that was when my daughter said the magic words "rose garden", and there was a sudden detour to the rose garden.



 

Actually, it's the ideal time of the year to see the bones of a garden.

I liked the simple design, the weathered brick , the trellises,  the clean lines of the paths and the fact that there were lots of benches to sit down in different parts of the garden.

Of course at the end of October, you expect patches of brown earth, and true, many of the roses were had lost their blossom, but there was still enough colour to gladden my heart.

 

I do like this ruby wedding rose even if it only has a faint fragrance 

 

 



This beauty, which I don't know the name of, was a vision of pastel prettiness...and its scent was just as subtle.

It's not a huge rose garden, but it's a perfect place to sit and ponder, away from the harsh winds of the sea front and the noise of the cars, to just relax.



But there's so much more to the site of this rose garden. It was previously an eighteenth century fortification called Lumps Fort. After a chequered history, in World War II, this area was used as a training base for the Royal Marine Boom Patrol Detachment.



 Have you ever heard of the Cockleshell Heroes? It's the title of a film made in 1955, which honoured the incredible bravery and fortitude of the men who trained here before launching a raid by canoe, on the harbour in Bordeaux a mere thirteen years earlier. They were an elite squad housed in two nissen huts , and trained for their mission in the Solent a few yards away.



The raid was called Operation Frankton, and back in those days Bordeaux was a key port for the Germans. The mission for the men was to attack all the cargo ships  which kept the German army supplied after paddling into the harbour by canoe.



Five canoes and ten men managed to not only sink one ship and badly damage four others with limpet mines, but they succeeded in curtailing the use of the harbour for months. Can you imagine what it must have been like to be taken to France by submarine, then sailing into a heavily guarded German occupied port in the depths of December?



Such a daring plan, but it was one which cost eight of the men their lives. Six were executed by the Germans and two died from hypothermia. Major Hasler and Bill Sparkes were the only two to survive.

 

It's said that Winston Churchill believed that their mission shortened the duration of World War II by six months. What a feat of courage, and how wonderful that this site wasn't built on in the post war frenzy of building.



I love the fact that this small rose garden, just a minute away from the rush of modern life, has been created as a place of tranquillity, of quiet beauty, where we can remember those heroes of World War  II.

 

D Day

Today is the 70th anniversary of D Day, a turning point in World War  II, where the bravery of the Allied troops changed the course of the war, and of history. A day when 4,087 Allied soldiers died.

It's a very emotional day for those former soldiers who are fit enough to return to Normandy, to see their fellow men, to accept the gratitude of so many, for what surely must be the last time.

It's an emotional day too for the families whose loved ones weren't able to return, and for those who survived as they see their relatives  struggle with their memories.

Over the last few years I've been very privileged to meet some of our D Day heroes, and what will I take away with me from meeting them is their sheer bravery, and the way that D Day and their wartime experiences are never far from their minds.

On Wednesday I was in North West Leicestershire to meet Roy Howe who was 19 on D Day.

He was a torpedo man who had already endured months working on the Russian convoy ships. On the morning of 6th June, he was relaying messages from shore to ship, but in the afternoon, he had a different job. He had to bring the wounded and dying back to his ship, the Serepice.




Roy and others like him saw things that no teenagers should see. And he still sees those dying and wounded in his dreams, even when he's awake. His tears run down his cheeks as he speaks, and as he then recounts the horrors of the Russian convoys, the tears fall faster and all I can do is hold the microphone and try not to sniffle and cry too.

 And I remember a good number of years ago interviewing the Right Reverend Maurice Wood, a former Bishop of Norwich. He was living in  a "home for decaying clergyman" as he termed it when I first met him. I was there to talk to him about something completely different, but as I was about to leave, I saw a huge leather bound book.

 "That's my prayer book " he said ...and as he opened the book and leafed carefully through the hundreds of pages, I saw it was no ordinary prayer book. On each page there was a list of names...people who he prayed for each day with dates alongside. I saw the dates on the earlier pages....June 1944. It was then he told me he was a marine commando chaplain and landed with his men on D Day and one of his closest friends was killed as soon as landing on the beach. his name is in that book, as  well as hundreds of others  killed during the landings .

Maurice died back in 2007 at the age of 90, but I will never forget him.

And that's the whole point of today...not to forget the sacrifices that were made seventy years ago. To think about the men and women who were placed in impossible situations, who did their best fighting for a cause. To say thank you....to salute their heroism, and remember not just the ones who lay in row upon row in those immaculate French cemeteries, but the ones who came back.. the ones who can still, to this day, never forget what happened.

If you'd like to listen to Roy Howe, and two others...Ken West and Eric Newby talk about their memories...then click here...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p020gm55