Description
Object description
Memoirs (368pp ts), first drafted in 1946 and expanded thereafter, recalling his teenage years in Plymouth in the 1930s, move to London in August 1939 to take up a job in the War Office, call-up into the Royal Artillery (TA) to help man an anti-aircraft battery near Plymouth on the outbreak of war, OCTU and gunnery courses, experiences of the heavy air-raids on Plymouth in early 1941, language and interrogation training before joining a RA Field Regiment with an emergency commission in 1942, Combined Operations training and consequent posting to a Combined Operations Bombardment Unit (COBU) as Bombardment Liaison Officer, further training in this role on the Orkney Islands based in the Norwegian destroyer SVENNER, assignment to 'Force S' as part of the Eastern Task Force in preparation for the Normandy landings in June 1944, the sinking of the SVENNER following a torpedo attack in the early hours of 6 June, rescue by HMS SWIFT and return to Britain for the rest of the war, postwar service in Germany with the British War Crimes Executive (BWCE) to assist with the preparation of the Krupp trial before being put in charge of the BWCE 'rear link' office in Bad Oeynhausen, attendance at the Belsen trial in Luneburg and at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, providing interesting vignettes of the British prosecuting team and of the defendants; Muddeman's personal experiences are embedded in more general reflections on wartime events, and the memoirs require careful reading.
Content description
Memoirs (368pp ts), first drafted in 1946 and expanded thereafter, recalling his teenage years in Plymouth in the 1930s, move to London in August 1939 to take up a job in the War Office, call-up into the Royal Artillery (TA) to help man an anti-aircraft battery near Plymouth on the outbreak of war, OCTU and gunnery courses, experiences of the heavy air-raids on Plymouth in early 1941, language and interrogation training before joining a RA Field Regiment with an emergency commission in 1942, Combined Operations training and consequent posting to a Combined Operations Bombardment Unit (COBU) as Bombardment Liaison Officer, further training in this role on the Orkney Islands based in the Norwegian destroyer SVENNER, assignment to 'Force S' as part of the Eastern Task Force in preparation for the Normandy landings in June 1944, the sinking of the SVENNER following a torpedo attack in the early hours of 6 June, rescue by HMS SWIFT and return to Britain for the rest of the war, postwar service in Germany with the British War Crimes Executive (BWCE) to assist with the preparation of the Krupp trial before being put in charge of the BWCE 'rear link' office in Bad Oeynhausen, attendance at the Belsen trial in Luneburg and at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, providing interesting vignettes of the British prosecuting team and of the defendants; Muddeman's personal experiences are embedded in more general reflections on wartime events, and the memoirs require careful reading.
History note
Cataloguer SWW
History note
Catalogue date 2000-12