A (6:39)

Our next story is from Dag Runner Gunderson. When I was a student, I had the privilege to attend a lecture by Gunnar Kjarkan Sandstabi, Norwegian's most highly decorated soldier and citizen. He was the leader of SOE's Oslo detachment and I am proud to say I also had the honour of shaking his hand, one of my few personal links to the history I'm so fond of. My family doesn't have much to brag about concerning the war. My grandparents were young and their parents were, as far as we know, never involved in anything, although it is speculated that my paternal grandfather might have had some links to the Communist resistance through his job at the Marienberg Railway Works in Trondheim. My dad has told me the stories he heard from them about bombers coming in to bomb the U boat pens Dora at the docks, one of the raids that is portrayed in Masters of the Air. They said British bombers would approach from the south along the river and they could see them at eye level from their house on the hill to the west of the city centre. My maternal grandmother was 11 in 1940 when Norway was occupied and they lived in social housing just outside the city. There was a small German contingent stationed there with a flak battery. He learnt German very early because of this, but I never heard him speak it. According to my grandmother, he didn't feel good about it after the war and again we have speculation within the family, since my grandmother has hinted that he was forced to be a translator for the Gestapo at their headquarters in Trondheim, where Sonder Abteilung Lola operated a group of Norwegians working for the Gestapo, infiltrating resistance networks. Many were caught, tortured and murdered by this group. A more lighthearted story is one he told me himself and something I will never forget. Where they lived there a Swedish Volksdeutscher soldier called Otto Ness was posted and he was regularly on guard duty right by where they lived. On March 1, probably egged on by his brothers, my grandfather went up to him and recited a poem they had made. I'll leave the Norwegian version at the end. Unfortunately, it's not as snappy in English as our Norwegian dialect, but here is a rough translation. Otto ness eats grass. March 1st. He eats shit. Or in the original Norwegian, Otto Ness wise Fustmars Spiesen Bass. According to my grandfather, this infuriated him so much that he chased him around and into the nearby woods. When he couldn't catch him, he fired a few shots at him. I asked my grandfather what happened after that, since he continued to live near him. I never passed him without dad after that, was his response. Truly a remarkable story. I miss him dearly and I got strangely emotional writing this. It would give me some small satisfaction that your listeners around the world would hear his joke. And that story was from Dag Runner Gunderson.

C (9:24)

And this story is from Dave King. Dave writes. Dear Alan James, I would like to tell you the story of my uncle Bill. In 1944 my uncle, Warrant Officer F.W. bill Cuthbertson of Durham City, eldest of three brothers, traded his quiet upbringing for the cockpit of a Hawker typhoon. Stationed with 182 Squadron at Advanced Landing Ground B78 Eindhoven. Bill was part of the 2nd Tactical Air Force striking enemy positions as the Allies pressed through the Low Countries into Germany. On 12 October, his Typhoon PD477 thundered low over Oostrom, its Napier Sabre engine screaming as German anti aircraft guns opened fire. Shrapnel tore into his aircraft, crippling both engine and landing gear. Bill wrestled with the controls, refusing to bail out, eventually crash landing in a potato field. Locals rushed to his aid, hiding him from encroaching German patrols. Bill evaded capture and was hidden by Dutch resistance for six weeks, eventually liberated by the 7th Battalion of the Sea 4th Highlanders and returned to his unit, the Farmer who dismantled and spirited away parts of the wreckage unknowingly preserved a fragment of history. That very propeller blade now rests as a war memorial to the Dutch Resistance in Severnham near Venlo. A quiet testament to sacrifice. On 28 February 1945, six Tiffys under command of Squadron Leader Slug Murray launched an assault against the heavily fortified rail yards at Osnabruck. Bill's Typhoon, part of Blue Section, swept in at low level beside his close friend, Flight Lieutenant Jack Taylor. They pressed their attack Strafing trains bristling with German armor. Flames rose from the wreckage. Taylor was hit and struggling with his aircraft. Bill circled, determined to cover his friend, only to be struck himself. Both men crash landed, their luck. Finally exhausted alive but surrounded, they were captured swiftly by the local militia and taken to Bermter police station, where a decision was made to kill both pilots in accordance with a recent instruction that no more low flying enemy pilots should be brought in alive. Bill and Jack were taken to a local forest, executed with pistols and callously buried in a shallow pit beneath branches. Their killers later lied, claiming it was an escape attempt. The truth was murder. Nothing further was heard about Ivor pilot. Justice, however, was not forgotten. The that December, a British special military court was convened in Osnabruck. Four German nationals were charged with committing a war crime and that they were concerned in the killing of two RAF pilots, both of whom were POWs. Two of the militiamen, the actual perpetrators, were condemned to death and hanged at Hamelin Prison, their punishment carried out by none other than Britain's chief executioner, Albert Pierrepoint. Story has it that Pierrepoint instructed improvements to be made to the gallows. This task was given to tradesmen from the local Royal Engineers workshop troop in the town. History's irony did not end there. In the post war years, Hamelin prison was returned to German control and eventually became a hotel. As a young Royal Engineer tradesman decades later, I was posted to the workshops troop in Hamelin and would pass the building on a daily basis, unaware of its sinister connection to my family and the role played by my predecessors. The story curved yet again, this time aboard a train in 1949, Bill's younger brother, my father, was returning to Durham. A stranger shared his carriage. They exchanged pleasantries and the man remarked casually in response, I'm heading to Durham too. I have business at the prison. They crossed the viaduct and arrived at the station. And as they were leaving the carriage, the chap said to dad, 5ft 5 inches and 10 stone. Sorry, occupational hazard. Near enough, dad said, and they parted company. The man in the carriage was Albert Pierrepoint, the very executioner who a few years earlier had carried out justice on the men responsible for his elder brother's death. Fate had drawn the line of his story full circle. From the fields around Eindhoven, the skies over Germany, to a quiet train carriage in post war England, where justice and memory sat opposite each other, unbeknownst to either of them. Dad seldom spoke of such matters. He has survived the war as an aircraft armorer in the Fleet Air Arm. But like so many, I fear he carries survivor's guilt. Dad passed away in 2013, leaving behind fragments of stories, fragments of history and the odd comic anecdote, I might add. Bill and his close friend Jack are still side by side, both in peace at Reichsfold Forest War Cemetery. Bill's headstone bears words as stark as his sacrifice, his life for his country, his soul to God. He was 22 years old and that remarkable story was from Dave King. Thank you, Dave, for sending that in. Wow, wasn't expecting that.

A (14:21)

This story is from Craig Green. I want to share a story regarding my granddad who served in the Second World War. His name was Tom Beresford. He landed on sword beach on June 8th with the 1st Battalion of the Herefordshire Regiment. The beach was still under enemy fire when we landed and the first wave of troops had fought their way up off the beaches. It was still littered with bodies when we landed, but we had to make a bridgehead for the tanks. We knew very little before we left England. I was hoping the invasion wasn't finished before I got there, but as soon as I landed on the beach, I was wishing I was back home. The Battle of Caen was my first major battle. It was pretty grim because we lost so many men, but I made it through unharmed. I was later machine gunned in the stomach outside Belsen concentration camp. I was bleeding back and front and I thought my time had come. My mates got a stretcher and tried to get me out but came under fire so they used my body as cover. I thought I was a goner so I prayed that I would be hit again so my life would end. I was taken back to camp where I was given the last rites by a priest who then tried to remove my personal items to send back to my nexter kin. I came round and thought I was being robbed so I told the priest where to go. I guess that saved my life because they sent me to hospital where I received emergency surgery. And that story was from Craig Greene.

C (15:44)

And this story is from Nick Clark. This is the story of my Uncle John. I knew him as a mild mannered accountant who was immensely well ready. He didn't really talk much about the war as I was growing up and when I asked about it, as small boys did in those days, he would smile and change the subject. Towards the end of his life, however, stories started to be told. Uncle John was in a tank regiment sent to Burma where he fought until the end of the war. On VJ Day, his unit was in Singapore and Uncle John was playing hockey in a needle match. A fellow soldier ran over to the pit shouting, the war's ended. The Japs have surrendered. The messenger got some choice words and was told to piss off. As the match was entering the last few minutes scores even. Uncle John's unit stayed in Singapore awaiting demob papers. When it finally came through, he noticed his best mate's demob date was six months later than his. They'd been through the whole of the Burma campaign together and so he wasn't going to bug out on him now, so requested to delay demob until his mates came through. The request was granted, and for his loyalty he found himself out of tanks and posted to Indonesia as part of the British support against growing communist insurgency. Once in Indonesia, Uncle John was out of tanks and assigned to lead section patrols in the Indonesian jungle to find and engage the communist guerrillas. One of these patrols. Things were fairly quiet as his patrol laid up for the afternoon in the temporary camp. After checking on his dispositions and ensuring sentries were posted and alert, he decided to have an hour's rest in his tent. Uncle John climbed into his hammock and promptly fell asleep. He was woken by the sounds of intense gunfire. A unit of guerrillas had stumbled upon his patrol and the two sides were now heavily engaged in a firefight. He jumped up from his bunk, put on his helmet and boots and rushed out to organize his section and then cleared the insurgents away from his camp. With bullets flying all around, Uncle John led the charge into the jungle. After a brief fight, the insurgents fled the onrushing British patrol. As he was assessing the aftermath of the firefight, Uncle John wondered why his men were looking at him and sniggering. He looked down and realized that apart from the boots and helmet he already put on, he was Starbollard naked. No wonder the communists legged it so quickly. As a coder on my last visit to Uncle John before he died, my wife and I were having a potter around his small suburban garden when my wife called me over to her. Behind a large shrub was a small collection of Burmese statuettes arranged in a horseshoe like a shrine. They had not been there previously and must have been a very recent addition to his garden. When we commented on it, he shrugged with a smile and changed the subject. I like to think it was there as a memory to his mates who didn't make it back, but sadly I never got the chance to ask him about it later. And that story was from Nick Clark.

A (18:30)

This story is from Lorenzo Greco. Moro. I was listening to your short series Death in the mountains. Thank you for nailing the pronunciation of every Italian name. After listening, I wanted to share my granddad's experience of the aftermath of the Paduli di Fuquecchio massacre. He was born in 1927 as a farmer in the Tuscan countryside. So he was too young and in too remote an area to be involved with the war. His family worked for a big farm and housed Nazis during the occupation, including the Nazis war chest of the area. Quite literally a big chest chock full of money. A couple of times the Nazis got drunk. My grandfather was the only man in the house, being about 16, 17 at the time. So when the Nazis in the middle of the night started shouting God knows what, he took the family hunting rifle, loaded it and waited at the top of the stairs to his mum and cousins rooms, ready to shoot on sight. Who knows what they would have done to the women, drunk and out of their minds. He told me I had to shoot them, but if I shot them, it was over for me. Luckily the chances never arose. The Nazis never tried to go upstairs. And all that was left of it was my grandfather's fear. He couldn't sleep for two days. After a few weeks, the massacre happened. The word spread quickly to the small towns nearby. The Nazis of the house weren't there. One would assume they were carrying out the massacre. His mum convinced him to run away because she got word that they were shooting every male who owned any kind of gun. And they did. He was betrayed by a fascist neighbour and caught with many others sometime after, in a big warehouse on the hills nearby. The owner of the house was beaten repeatedly and eventually died from the shock. But they were in luck. No weapon of any kind was found. The fascists and Nazis brought them to a makeshift labour camp in the nearby Pistoia hills. Time went by. The artillery shots from the advancing Allies grew louder and closer every night. Until one early morning. The Nazis didn't enforce the morning call. My grandfather thought they were about to get deported. The Americans were too close. He tried to convince his companions. Who knows where they'll bring us and if he'll ever come back. But he was just a contadino, not a great orator. Convincing people is no easy feat, especially if they're frightened. If my grandfather was something, he was stubborn. His tent was near the boundary. He put on a shirt and snuck from the back of the tent. When his roommates were too busy arguing as fate wanted. His shirt got stuck in the barbed wire while he was trying to crawl below it. I didn't know what to do. And fear took me. If I moved, they'd hear me and I was dead. If I stayed, I'd be dead. Soon after I froze. Turns out he did manage to convince one other to follow him. Or maybe he saw my granddad stuck and couldn't stay still. Nonetheless, Alfredo Nello Raffanelli saved my grandfather and in a way, me. And they managed to escape together. They walked the whole morning. They had walked in a big circle and came back to the camp from the other side six hours later when they realized this time they ran. They managed to walk back home in a couple of weeks, living off of strangers mercy. Turns out my grandfather was right. The Allies were about to push the Nazis back and he came back to a liberated town. And he was right that the remaining 17 from that camp were deported to northern Italy. Two never returned. This was the story of Dino Giovanelli. He passed last year. Hard to know if anybody would care about it outside the family. But if it's anybody, maybe it's you. And that story was from Lorenzo Greco Moro. This story is from Karol Terrerschuk. This is a harrowing account of an unforgettable chapter in the life of my father. His name is Stanisaw Tereshuk. His story begins much like that of many other Poles who lived in the Krasi region, borderlands of eastern Poland at the onset of the Second World War. What sets my father's story apart from countless others are the events that unfolded during the Italian campaign, specifically throughout the major Allied offensive on the Gustav Line and Monte Cassino Abbey. It is an incredible story of courage and survival against all odds. It was H hour 23 o' clock on the night of 11 May, marking the start of Operation Diadem, the fourth battle of Monte Cassino. As the massed artillery barrage began, Stanislar Tereshuk, a 21 year old officer cadet in the 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division, offered a prayer for the souls of those who had fallen in the previous three battles and for his own safe passage. Stanislav was part of the 2nd Rifle Battalion of the 1st Carpathian Rifle Brigade whose objective was to capture Hill 593, situated along the Snake's Head Ridge, and then advance on to Hill 569. At 0130 hours on 12 May, the artillery barrage ceased and the assault began. He was carrying a Thompson submachine gun, but when he saw a fellow soldier, Sergeant Jabicki, struggling with his weapon, Stanislav took pity and swapped his submachine gun for the other man's 34 kilogram flamethrower. In the darkness, burdened by his heavy load, Stanislav was bringing up the rear of the platoon. Up ahead, the platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Romanski, encountered tough resistance from a German stronghold in the rocks and called for the heavy flamethrower to come forward. Meanwhile, Stanislav was desperately trying to free himself from the barbed wire. Suddenly, a grenade exploded on Sergeant Gaboratchik's helmet, who was tangled in the barbed wire with Stanislav. Both men were knocked to the ground, stunned and trying to get to his feet. There was a further explosion and Stanislav lost consciousness. Stanislav awoke to a tremendous pain in his left leg. The heavy flamethrower was gone, lightly retrieved by another soldier who recognized the need for it. Further ahead, he was lying on his back amongst broken strands of barbed wire and raised his head to investigate the source of his agony. The lower part of his left leg was a pulp of muscle tissue and protruding bone splinters. The shock was disorientating, yet his brain dismissed the sight somewhat trivially to focus on a more pressing problem. Why? His feet were pointing in different directions. Perplexed and unable to fathom an answer, he knew corrective action was required. However, his brain power alone was not enough and the twisted left leg refused to turn. With the sole determination to realign his body, he rolled over onto his front. Although in this position he was unable to see for himself, he now felt certain and content that both feet were aligned and pointing down. Two hours passed when suddenly he felt a dreadful new pain tear across his back. He had been raked with a dense spray of bullets from an MG42 machine gun. Wounded for the second time, he lay there for the remainder of the night. At dawn on 12 May, the battle subsided and Polish paramedic Brzezinski, assisted by a German paramedic prisoner, attended to him. They used a rifle as a splint and stretched him to a Polish stronghold further up the hill and placed him in a hollow. He lay there, still on his front, watching the fighting. By 11:30 hours, however, the Polish losses were becoming too great and the battle began to turn in favour of the Germans. HQ ordered a tactical retreat and the Poles began to evacuate their positions, descending back down the hill in the confusion of the retreat, Stanisaw was left behind. On the morning of 13 May, a German patrol found Stanislav and carried him about 3 km down the other side of the hill to one of their first aid posts, located in a cave. The Germans had neither water nor food to give, and Stanislav lay there for the whole of the second day and third night, his unattended wounds became infected. On the third day, the 14th of May, the Germans began to evacuate the wounded, relocating them to the ruins of a small house. The process was far from gentle, and the rough manhandling caused the wounds on Stanisaw's back to reopen, inflicting significant pain and discomfort. That night, there was another Allied artillery barrage. Shells whistled through the air and explosions shone light through the holes in the walls, creating dancing patterns inside the ruins. It was a curiously pleasant distraction from a potentially fatal situation. On 15 May, now his fourth day without water, Stanislav's lips were cracked and parched, and an insatiable thirst longed to be quenched. Stanislav, along with the four other wounded Poles, was being moved again. One by one, they were taken from the house, along a labyrinth of paths between the rocks to a waiting covered lorry. Just then, mortar shells began raining down and the Germans scattered in panic. A shell landed nearby, then a second, closer still. The third struck the lorry cabs directly. It erupted in flames, and the burning tarpaulin cover collapsed. Boxes of ammunition began to detonate, and Stanisaw felt a searing pain in his healthy right leg. An exploding bullet had passed straight through his right calf, fracturing the bones. With flames closing in all around him, he somehow summoned the strength to drag himself to the back of the lorry and roll off, hitting the ground like a lifeless sack. Fuel cans began to explode, showering the poor man in burning petrol, and he did what little he could to protect himself, trying to shield his face with his burning hands. None of the other Poles managed to escape the inferno. Stanislav could do nothing more than listen to the terrible screams of those burning alive inside the lorry. Soon the nighttime artillery barrage began and explosions momentarily illuminated the surrounding area. The crunching of gravel underfoot alerted Stanislav to people approaching. German paratroopers grabbed his arms and dragged him over the gravel and rocks into a bunker, the burnt skin peeling off his hands in the process. The paratroopers bandaged the bleeding right leg, but the left leg they dared not touch. They, too had no water. It must have been around 300 hours when a German officer entered the bunker. He gave the order to move out in one hour. What about him? Said a soldier, gesturing to Stanisaw. When we leave, finish him off, was the officer's reply. Stanisaw, who spoke several languages, gave no indication that he had understood the German conversation. The officer left the bunker, and one of the soldiers, lit a cigarette and looked at his wristwatch. The minutes ticked by and finally the German paratroopers stood up, gathered their things and left the bunker. Stanisaw rolled over to the spirit lamp and extinguished the faint glimmer in the darkness. He then rolled to the opposite side of the bunker. The barrel of a Schmeisser appeared through the opening in a burst of automatic fire, cut across the wall where just moments ago Stanislav had lain. Footsteps departed and faded away. Day passed to night. Night passed. A day passed to night again and passed today yet once more. By the afternoon of the 18th of May, a few kilometers to the southeast, victorious Polish soldiers were raising the white and red Polish national flag above the ruins of Monte Cassino Abbey and the Battle of Monte Cassino was over. Back to the northwest, Stanislav, having been wounded four times, was still lying in the bunker. It was seven days since his personal battle began. Seven days since first being wounded, seven days without proper medical treatment, seven days without water or food. Seven days of hell. On the slopes of Monte Cassino in the late afternoon, he was awoken by the sound of an engine and voices. They were English voices. He wanted to shout, but could not tell if he had even managed to make a sound. He had probably groaned because entering through the opening this time was not a Schmeisser but a British soldier with a canteen of water. Stanislav's mouth opened, eyelids flickered, and the Brit saw a spark of life in the opening eyes. He called to his friends for another canteen of water. An additional flask was passed in and it too was drained just as the first. His rescuers called for a stretcher and gently placed him on it. The stretcher was laid across a jeep and the British soldiers pushed the jeep for two kilometres to the first aid post without the engine running to reduce shaking and prevent further trauma. At the first aid post, nurses began cleaning the wounds, administered injections, inserted drips and and applied a face mask to his burns. Thereafter he was Transferred to the 5th Combat Casualty Station. Dr. Jakubowski took him straight onto the operating table. The left leg was gangrenous and had to be amputated below the knee. As soon as Stanislav was well enough to travel, a hospital ship took him from Italy to Liverpool, then onward to Aberfeldy in Scotland for further recuperation. Until March 1946, Stanislav had survived. He was now safe, but had suffered tremendous injuries, including the life changing loss of a limb, along with harrowing memories of the hell on the slopes of Monte Cassino that story was from Karel Tereshuk. Thanks very much for that, Carol. Well, that's all for this episode. If you've got a family story you'd like to be considered for the show, please email it to wehavewaysolehanger.com if you have any photos or images alongside these stories, we can have your permission to use two. Please include them with your submission. And don't forget to label the email Family Stories so that we don't miss it. Thanks for listening and cheerio.

D (31:19)

One of the darkest scandals of the modern era, a billionaire financier, powerful friends, hidden networks, and questions that refuse to go away. Was Jeffrey Epstein a spy? I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey, and we're the hosts of the Rest Is Classified, the intelligence and national security podcast from Goal Hanger. And we've just released a gripping new series investigating whether Epstein was linked to any spy agencies and asking what those agencies might have known about him. Listen or watch now on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.