Yeovil in the Second World War

Description

Jack Sweet takes a personal look back to Yeovil during the six momentous years of the Second World War and during the time when he grew up. He tells of the air raids, how people rallied to civil defence, welcomed thousands of young evacuees in 1939 and again in 1944. How people dealt with the many trials of a population facing and enduring total war. Sitting for hours in uncomfortable air raid shelters hearing German bombers flying overhead and wondering whether the bombs would fall on Yeovil. How the townsfolk saved to buy, a destroyer and a Spitfire, and 'Saluted the Soldier'. Heard the roar of aircraft engines from the Westland Aircraft works and watched Lysanders, Whirlwinds and Spitfires flying overhead. Enjoyed the 'friendly invasion' of the US Army preparing for D-Day, saw them go off to battle and finally the joy of VE and VJ-Days. Total war meant that no-one in the town, young and old alike escaped unaffected.

Jack Sweet was born in Yeovil and on leaving the Royal Air Force in 1958, became a local government administrator and took early retirement in 1992. In 1997 his first Somerset themed book Shocking Somerset Murders of the Nineteenth Century was published followed by ten more, including three with co-author Robin Ansell, and Yeovil in the Great War 1914-18 published by Fonthill Media in 2014. Jack's interest in military history has taken him to many former battlefields from South Africa ot the Crimea, via the USA and Europe.