Husband of 28years, Father of 5 fanatical Oxford United supporters + 3 wonderful grandchildren. Fascinated with The Great War . Up the Manor! #OUFC
Henley-on-Thames, England
Joined August 2011
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On Thursday I was at the Henley market and saw an exhibition about Henley and The Hundred day offensive in 1918.It was curated by a young University student called Sofia.Sofia and her younger brother were so knowledgeable and should be proud of themselves.
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Danny Jones retweeted
Seventy-two. That is how many separate wounds John Cruickshank had in him, two of them through his lungs, while he lined up a burning flying boat for a second run at a U-boat that had just shot his aircraft to pieces. Most men have one of those wounds and they are finished. He had seventy-two and he pressed the attack.
He was 24, a former bank clerk from Aberdeen, flying a Catalina flying boat out of the Shetland Islands with Coastal Command. The job was the long, freezing, mind-numbing patrol, fourteen hours over the grey Atlantic hunting the U-boats that were strangling Britain. On the 17th of July 1944, far out over empty water, they caught one on the surface, U-361, and Cruickshank took the big slow flying boat down to attack.
The first run failed. The depth charges would not release. Any sane man makes a note and turns for home. Cruickshank swung the aircraft around and came back for a second pass, low and straight, and this time the submarine's gunners were waiting. Flak ripped through the Catalina. It killed the navigator, wounded half the crew, and tore into Cruickshank again and again, those seventy-two wounds, two punching into his lungs, ten into his legs.
And he flew the attack home anyway. Bleeding everywhere, in agony, with the fuselage holed and on fire, he held the aircraft dead level, aimed, and released the depth charges himself. They straddled the U-boat perfectly. It broke apart and sank beneath him.
Then came the part that should have killed him. He collapsed from blood loss, and the wounded co-pilot, who had never landed a Catalina, took the controls for the long flight back. Cruickshank refused the morphine that would have knocked him out, because he knew the man flying needed him. Drifting in and out, he had himself carried back up to the cockpit again and again through the night to help nurse the shot-up aircraft down, and at dawn they got it onto the water safely. He had lost so much blood the doctors said he had no business being alive.
He lived. He took the Victoria Cross from the King, went quietly back to banking after the war, and rarely spoke of it. And he kept on living, and living, and living. John Cruickshank died in 2025 at the age of 105, the last man on earth wearing a Victoria Cross earned in the Second World War. Seventy-two wounds over the Atlantic, and he outlasted every other hero of that war by decades.
Danny Jones retweeted
Frank Prentice, an assistant purser on the RMS Titanic, describes how he survived the sinking of the ship.
An article on BBC radio Oxford yesterday . An appeal to find the relatives of The Polish WW2 Raf pilot Sylwester Jezry Godlewski. @FlightPolish @SpitfireAA810 @Poland
Danny Jones retweeted
It’s 62 years since #oufc’s most famous meeting with Blackburn.
21,700 fans squeezed into the Manor for an FA Cup 5th round tie in February 1964, as 4th-tier United claimed a shock 3-1 win over a Rovers side who were 2nd in Division 1.
Some great British Pathé footage here!
Danny Jones retweeted
In 1943, Paris - a woman sits in a Gestapo interrogation room, her feet bleeding, her body broken.
The officers across from her know she's holding secrets. Names of British agents. Locations of resistance safe houses. Intelligence that could dismantle entire networks across France.
They've already started the torture. Her toenails are being removed, one at a time. Soon they'll use heated irons on her back. They'll lock her in darkness for weeks. They'll promise her life in exchange for just one name.
She's a 30-year-old mother of three. Not a soldier. Not a spy by training. Just a French-born housewife who was living quietly in England until Hitler's armies swallowed her homeland.
That's when Odette Sansom made a choice that most of us will never have to make. She left her three daughters behind and volunteered for Britain's Special Operations Executive, the shadow organization built to sabotage Nazi operations from within.
The SOE didn't want career military. They wanted people who could disappear into occupied territory. People who spoke native French. People willing to accept that capture likely meant torture and execution.
Odette knew the odds. She volunteered anyway.
By 1942, she was operating in occupied France under the codename "Lise," coordinating resistance cells, organizing sabotage, funneling intelligence back to London. She worked alongside Captain Peter Churchill, building networks that struck at German supply lines and communications.
For months, they were ghosts. Then a collaborator sold them out.
Now she's in this room. In this chair. Facing men who have perfected the art of breaking human beings.
And here's what they don't understand: Odette Sansom has already decided she won't break. Not for pain. Not for promises. Not even to save her own life.
Because she knows that every name she gives means another agent tortured. Another resistance fighter executed. Another family destroyed.
So she gives them nothing. Through months of interrogation. Through agony most of us can't fathom. Through solitary confinement and death threats.
Nothing.
The Gestapo eventually realizes they can't break her. They send her to Ravensbrück concentration camp, condemned under "Night and Fog" protocol, prisoners meant to vanish without trace.
She survives more than a year there by convincing the commandant she's related to Winston Churchill. It's a complete lie, but it keeps her alive.
When Allied forces arrive in 1945, that same commandant tries using her as a bargaining chip. The moment they reach American lines, Odette identifies him as a war criminal. He's arrested on the spot.
Britain awarded her the George Cross, the highest civilian honor for courage. The citation was clear: for refusing to betray her comrades despite torture that would break nearly anyone.
Then in 1951, someone stole the medal from her home. Months later, it arrived in the mail with an anonymous note. The thief had researched what it represented and couldn't live with keeping it.
Even criminals recognized what that medal meant.
Odette Sansom Hallowes lived to 82, spending decades honoring fallen comrades and embodying quiet strength. She always insisted she'd simply done what anyone should do.
But that's not true. What she did was extraordinary. She proved that the most powerful resistance to tyranny isn't violence. It's the absolute refusal to break, no matter the cost.
📷© Imperial War Museums (Restored & Colorized)
© Daughters of Time
#drthehistories
Danny Jones retweeted
She was 23, a widow with a baby, when she parachuted into Nazi-occupied France—and changed history forever.
Violette Szabo's life should have been ordinary. Born in 1921 to a French mother and British father, she grew up between two worlds, fluent in both languages, dreaming of nothing more than love and family.
She found both. Married young to Étienne, a dashing French Foreign Legionnaire. Had a daughter, Tania. Built the beginning of a life.
Then the telegram came. Étienne—killed in action at El Alamein. Gone before he ever met his daughter.
Most 21-year-old widows would have collapsed into grief. Violette transformed hers into fire.
She walked into the offices of Britain's Special Operations Executive—the shadowy organization training agents for espionage and sabotage behind enemy lines. The same organization that barely believed women belonged in such dangerous work.
She didn't ask permission. She demanded training.
And they gave it to her. Weaponry. Parachuting. Demolition. Hand-to-hand combat. She mastered it all with a ferocity that stunned her instructors. This wasn't just duty—this was personal.
Violette parachuted into occupied France twice. Not as a nurse. Not as a secretary. As an operative. She gathered intelligence. Coordinated resistance networks. Armed the French underground. Moved through Nazi checkpoints with a calmness that belied the danger humming beneath every moment.
On her second mission in June 1944, everything went sideways. Ambushed by German troops, she could have run. She could have hidden.
Instead, she fought.
With her Sten gun blazing, Violette held her ground, providing covering fire so her comrade could escape. She exchanged shots with trained soldiers until her ammunition ran dry. Only then did they take her.
What followed was worse than any battlefield. Interrogation. Torture. The Gestapo tried everything to break her—to extract names, safe houses, codes that would destroy the resistance network she'd helped build.
She gave them nothing.
They sent her to Ravensbrück, the concentration camp designed to extinguish hope, especially in women. But even there, fellow prisoners remembered Violette's strength. Her defiance. Her humanity in a place built to erase it.
On February 5, 1945—just weeks before the war's end—she was executed. She was 23 years old. Her daughter was barely three.
Violette Szabo never wore a general's uniform. She never commanded armies. She fought in occupied villages and darkened safe houses, with false papers and a gun she knew how to use.
History didn't make room for women like her—so she made room for herself.
She reminds us that courage doesn't wait for permission. That grief can become power. That the most dangerous weapon in any war is someone with nothing left to lose and everything to fight for.
Her daughter Tania grew up without her. But she grew up free.
That's what Violette died for. That's what she'll always be remembered for.
Not as a victim. Not as a footnote.
As a warrior.
Danny Jones retweeted
18 December 2022. Terry Hall died (aged 63). He rose to fame as the lead singer of the 2-tone band, The Specials who had a No 1 hit in 1981 with Ghost Town. He later recorded with groups such as Fun Boy Three, Colourfield and Vegas.
I was lucky enough to win this wonderful collection of military memorabilia at a local auction house .It's time now to research the names of the brave soldiers. @ThisDayInWWI @Sophie_1WWTours @WW1IEPER1917 @WW1IEPER1917 @AMTJones1966 @churchill_alex @lilyajones99 @Ollie_52
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Some of our finds found field walking the Somme battle fields. A very moving and humbling experience. Many thanks to the Commonwealth war graves commission for keeping the Cemeteries and graves so immaculate. @CWGC @AMTJones1966 @ww1cemeteries
Me and my eldest son Luke returned home from a 3 day visit to The battle fields of The Somme .What an experience. We stayed in the historic town of Arras, a must visit if you're in France. We visited many beautiful memorials and cemeteries dedicated to the fallen .RIP. xx.
Danny Jones retweeted
Happy Bank Holiday Monday, Marty Feldman takes a Lightning Fast Trip to the coast, have a very happy bank holiday.
Danny Jones retweeted
Jeremy Clarkson has opened his new pub in Burford.
Everything is from Great Britain as he wants to back British farming.
Our reporter @JournoCallum asked him what produce has come from Oxfordshire…
Danny Jones retweeted
Start your day right by watching this Mark Harris goal of the season contender again 🚀
That's 3⃣ in 3⃣ for the @OUFCOfficial man 😍
Someone to keep an eye on? 👀
#FEFL | #EFL