Imperial War Museum

Today I took a walk to the Imperial War Museum. It's only a few blocks from my school, and although it was a rainy day, I survived :)
I thought it would be appropriate to accompany these pictures with some excerpts from my Grandpa's war memoirs. He was in the Army on limited service. While he was in Europe he was stationed with a Welsh family who I spoke about earlier.
Here are a few excerpts:

"The name of the little town was Treorchy in the Rhondda Valley, Glamorgan, SO. Wales and I had the good fortune to live with the Exell Family (Mr. & Ms. Colin Exell and their four children). Their youngest son, Gordon, and I became very good friends which resulted in a lifetime friendship of over 45 years. Living standards in Treorchy were about twenty-five years behind ours and an interesting experience for an American lad. The bathroom was in the backyard and the bathtub (per se) was a copper tub in the basement that had to be filled with hot water from the stove before we bathed. We were accepted and treated like family and they enjoyed fussing over us.

Mr. Exell was a coal miner and the town was in a valley surrounded by mountains. Very often Gordon and I climbed to the top of one of the mountains where we practiced target shooting. It was a great thrill for Gordon (who was 18 years old) to use an American carbine. The family was on war rations so we GI's would often sneak home extra Army rations. It was a most pleasant place to be prior to the invasion of Europe which we knew was not too far off."
...

D-Day

"As dawn broke we could see a sight as awesome as anyone will ever see of thousands of ships gathered together in the channel to invade France. We could hear the planes overhead carrying the paratroopers. As it got a little lighter we began to see that we weren't too far from land and the only ships in front of us were the minesweepers - meaning that we were one of the first ships to arrive in our area. Behind us and alongside us we could see ships with soldiers, tanks and whatever. As the day got brighter it had stopped raining and we could see the beach and some of our fighting men starting to make landings on the beach, and we could see what a true picture of war was really about. Our ship was held away from the beach while others passed us by - they evidently felt that the gasoline was a very critical iem and didn't want to lose it so we sat anchored about a half mile from the beach. "

There's much more, maybe I'll share again.

Here are the pictures for today