BBC
2 November 2009

**This is a really cool automatic slideshow of images of these amazing women. WWII is one of my interests, particularly aerial bombing missions. I love history. Click the link at the top of the photo to go to the BBC article where you can start the slideshow. Details for listening to the BBC Radio 4 programme are below.

Night Witches



Russia's three all-female air regiments flew more than 30,000 missions along the Eastern Front in WWII. At home they were known as 'Stalin's Falcons', but terrified German troops called them the 'Night Witches'.

Here - with the help of archive images - Radio 4's Lucy Ash tells their story, and discovers that their extraordinary exploits have inspired others decades later.

Images courtesy RIA Novosti, Getty Images, Anna Yegorova, Garth Ennis and Russ Braun.

Night Witches will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 2002 on Monday 2 November 2009. It will then be available for seven days on >>the BBC iPlayer.

Slideshow production by Paul Kerley

By Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad
15 October 2009

AT LEAST 85,994 Iraqis lost their lives between 2004 and 2008 because of violence, Iraq's government has said, in its first comprehensive tally released since the war began.

The report by the human rights ministry came out as part of a larger study on human rights in the country. It said 85,694 people were killed in the four-year period, and 147,195 were wounded during the same period.

An Iraqi man rushes his wounded son to hospital.

The toll counted Iraqi civilians, military and police. It did not cover foreign military deaths, insurgents, or other foreigners, including security contractors.

The Iraqi death toll has been a hotly disputed subject and critics across the political spectrum have accused others of manipulating the death numbers to sway public opinion.

As Iraq became increasingly violent following the 2003 invasion, it also became increasingly difficult to track such figures independently on a wide scale.

The most recent numbers from Iraq Body Count, a private London-based group that has tracked civilian casualties since the war began, puts the number of civilian casualties as of 14 October at 93,540. ( >>Continued )

BBC
14 Sept 09

A war hero pigeon who received a medal for his bravery is to be honoured in his home town of Carnlough.

Paddy the pigeon, who was bred in the townland of Moyleen, was the first bird to fly back with news of the D-Day landings in Normandy in World War II.

Now, a plaque is being put up at Carnlough harbour in honour of the only Irish pigeon to receive a Dickin medal.

Paddy the pigeon from Carnlough was a war hero

Paddy received the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross for a secret mission codenamed "U2".

Two days after D-Day, 30 pigeons were transported to France by a unit of the 1st US Army.

Paddy's task began in Normandy at around 0815 BST on 12 June, when he was released while carrying coded information on the Allied advance.

Paddy received a bravery medal

He returned to his loft in Hampshire in just four hours and 50 minutes, the fastest time recorded by a message-carrying pigeon during the Normandy landings.

After the war, the bird was returned to his owner in Carnlough, where he died in 1954, aged eleven years old.

At a special ceremony next Saturday the plaque will be unveiled by John McMullan, a well-known local pigeon breeder and friend of Captain Andrew Hughes, an army officer, who owned Paddy.

A song about the famous pigeon will have its first public airing at the event.

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Independent.ie
Wednesday September 09 2009



The body of a girl who was found in the rubble of her destroyed house following an Israeli air strike on a house in Zeitoun [Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP]

ISRAELI'S official figures seriously underestimated the civilian Palestinian death toll exacted during its onslaught in Gaza early this year, according to new research to be published today.

The first detailed casualty figures from an Israeli human rights organisation since the war ended puts the number of children under 16 killed in the offensive at 252 as opposed to the 89 cited by the military.

>>B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories), which carried out "months of meticulous investigation and cross-checks with numerous sources", gathered death certificates, photos and testimonies relating to all 252 of the children.

Unlike the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) B'Tselem also made public the names of all those it said were killed.

It said that since the IDF had refused to furnish the agency with its own detailed list, it was impossible to compare the names but that "the blatant discrepancy between the numbers is intolerable".

The IDF is currently investigating allegations that a soldier shot and killed two young Palestinian girls and wounded their sister as they walked from their house with their parents and grandmother, who was waving a white flag.

It is one of several investigations still under way into the conduct of Operation Cast Lead, which the IDF have repeatedly insisted was conducted according to international law.

B'Tselem's total Palestinian death toll exceeds by more than 200 the 1,166 cited by the IDF, which said that around 709 of the dead were "Hamas terror operatives" and that a total of 295 "not involved" Palestinians were killed.

Probe

By contrast, B'Tselem puts the total figure for those who "did not take part in the hostilities" at 773 and is calling for an "independent and credible" probe into the military's conduct of the war.

While acknowledging that the numbers did not themselves prove "that Israel violated the laws of war", they should be considered along with "numerous testimonies" by IDF soldiers and Palestinians during and after the operation, B'Tselem said. (© Independent News Services)

- Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem

Hitler's former bodyguard Rochus Misch is the last survivor of Hitler's bunker

By Steven Rosenberg
BBC News, Berlin
Thursday, 3 September 2009 09:02 UK

**Watch video

At his living room table, 92-year-old Rochus Misch shows me some of his old photo albums. Private pictures he had taken more than 60 years ago. There are colour images of Mr Misch in an SS uniform at Adolf Hitler's home in the Alps, snapshots of Hitler staring at rabbits, and photos of Hitler's mistress and future wife Eva Braun.

For five years, SS Oberscharfuehrer Rochus Misch had been part of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, as a bodyguard, a courier and telephone operator to the Fuehrer.

"My first meeting with Hitler was rather strange," Mr Misch recalls. "I'd been in the job 12 days when Hitler's chief adjutant, a man called Bruckner, started asking me questions about my grandmother, about my childhood.

Rochus Misch spent years as part of Hitler's inner circle. Photo Rochus Misch

"Then he got up and walked towards the door. Being an obedient soldier, I flung myself forward to open it, and there was Hitler standing right behind the door. I felt cold. Then I felt hot. I felt every emotion standing there opposite Hitler.

"In the Fuehrer's entourage, strictly speaking, we were bodyguards," says Mr Misch. "When Hitler was travelling, between four and six of us would accompany him in a second car. But when we were at Hitler's apartment in the Chancellery we also had other duties. Two of us would always work as telephone operators. With a boss like Hitler, there were always plenty of phone calls."

Last survivor

With the Allies advancing and Germany on the brink of defeat, Hitler retreated to his Berlin bunker. Rochus Misch was the telephone operator there.

"I worked in a small room with a telephone and teletype machine with outside lines," he remembers.

"There was only enough room to shelter one extra person in my room in the event of an air raid. The bunker really wasn't that big. It contained small rooms of only 10 to 12 square metres."

Hitler's HQ in eastern Poland was known as the Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair). Photo: Rochus Misch

Rochus Misch is the last survivor of the Hitler bunker. He is the final witness of the drama that took place there on 30 April 1945. It was the day Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.

"Suddenly I heard somebody shouting to Hitler's attendant: 'Linge, Linge, I think it's happened.' They'd heard a gunshot, but I hadn't. At that moment Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, ordered everyone to be silent. Everyone began whispering. I was speaking on the telephone and I made sure I talked louder on purpose because I wanted to hear something. I didn't want it to feel like we were in a death bunker.

Deaths

"Then Bormann ordered Hitler's door to be opened. I saw Hitler slumped with his head on the table. Eva Braun was lying on the sofa, with her head towards him. Her knees were drawn tightly up to her chest. She was wearing a dark blue dress with white frills. I will never forget it.

Eva Braun at The Berghof, Hitler's Alpine HQ. Photo Rochus Misch

"I watched as they wrapped Hitler up. His legs were sticking out as they carried him past me. Someone shouted to me: 'Hurry upstairs, they're burning the boss!' I decided not to go because I had noticed that Mueller from the Gestapo was there - and he was never usually around. I said to my comrade Hentschel, the mechanic: 'Maybe we will be killed for being the last witnesses.'"

The next day the drama continued. Down in the bunker, the six children of Germany's new leader - Joseph Goebbels - were drugged and murdered. It was their own mother Magda who killed them.

"Straight after Hitler's death, Mrs Goebbels came down to the bunker with her children," Mr Misch recalls. "She started preparing to kill them. She couldn't have done that above ground - there were other people there who would have stopped her. That's why she came downstairs - because no-one else was allowed in the bunker. She came down on purpose to kill them.

"The kids were right next to me and behind me. We all knew what was going to happen. It was clear. I saw Hitler's doctor, Dr Stumpfegger give the children something to drink. Some kind of sugary drink. Then Stumpfegger went and helped to kill them. All of us knew what was going on. An hour or two later, Mrs Goebbels came out crying. She sat down at a table and began playing patience."

Crimes

Mr Misch fled Hitler's bunker just hours before it was seized by the Red Army. But he was quickly captured and spent the next nine years in Soviet labour camps. The captured "Fuehrerbunker" became a symbol of the Allies' victory in World War II.

Winston Churchill poses outside the Berlin bunker

Two months after the end of the war, Winston Churchill visited it. He posed for photos outside, sitting on a chair recovered from the shelter. In later years, the bunker was blown up to stop it becoming a Nazi shrine.

At the end of our conversation, I ask Rochus Misch whether he knew of the horrors that Adolf Hitler had unleashed across Europe. Did he know about the Holocaust?

"I knew about Dachau camp and about concentration camps in general," he tells me. "But I had no idea of the scale. It wasn't part of our conversations. The Nuremberg Trial dealt with crimes committed by the Germans. But you must remember there was never a war when crimes weren't committed, and there never will be."

Britain declared war on Nazi Germany exactly 70 years ago this week

By David Rising in Berlin
Scotsman
28 August 2009



Photo: Auschwitz-Birkenau from dpcamps.org

ARCHITECTURAL plans for the Auschwitz death camp that were found in Berlin last year were handed over to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday for display at the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The 29 sketches of the death camp built in Nazi-occupied Poland date as far back as 1941. They include detailed blueprints for gas chambers, crematoria, barracks and delousing facilities and are considered important for understanding the beginnings of the Nazi genocide.

The sketches are initialled by the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, and Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess.

"There are those who deny that the Holocaust happened," Mr Netanyahu said. "Let them come to Jerusalem and look at these plans, these plans for the factory of death." ( >>Continue reading )

BBC
22 Aug 09

The US army officer convicted for his part in the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has offered his first public apology, a US report says.

"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened," Lt William Calley was quoted as saying by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

Calley maintains that he was following orders from his superior

He was addressing a small group at a community club in Columbus, Georgia.

Calley, 66, was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the 1968 massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam.

Cold blood

"I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry," the former US platoon commander said on Wednesday.

Bodies of women and children lie in the road leading to the village of My Lai, following the massacre.

He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings in 1971. Then-US President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to three years' house arrest.

But Calley insisted that he was only following orders, the paper reported.

He broke his silence after accepting a friend's invitation to speak at the weekly meeting of the Kiwanis Club, a US-based global voluntary organisation.

The My Lai massacre was a turning point in the Vietnam War

At the time of the killings, the US soldiers had been on a "search and destroy" mission to root out communist fighters in what was fertile Viet Cong territory.

Although the enemy was nowhere to be seen, the US soldiers of Charlie Company rounded up unarmed civilians and gunned them down.

When the story of My Lai was exposed, more than a year later, it tarnished the name of the US army and proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War.

BBC
20 July 09

The detailed service records of 250,000 medieval soldiers - including archers who served with Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt - have gone online.

The database of those who fought in the Hundred Years War reveals salaries, sickness records and who was knighted.

The full profiles of soldiers from 1369 to 1453 will allow researchers to piece together details of their lives.

The new website reveals which medieval soldiers rode the farthest

Thomas, Lord Despenser is the youngest soldier on the database, whose career began when he was aged just 12 in 1385.

Elsewhere, the career of Thomas Gloucestre, who fought at Agincourt, can be traced over 43 years and includes campaigns in Prussia and Jerusalem.

'Remarkable survival'

The website is the product of a research project by Professor Anne Curry of the University of Southampton and Dr Adrian Bell of the University of Reading.

Dr Bell said: "The service records survive because the English exchequer had a very modern obsession with wanting to be sure that the government's money was being spent as intended.

"Therefore we have the remarkable survival of indentures for service detailing the forces to be raised, muster rolls showing this service and naming every soldier from duke to archer."

He said accounts from captains showing how funds were spent and entries detailing when the exchequer requested the payments can be found.

The free-to-use website, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, also shows which soldiers rode the furthest.

Go here to view: http://www.icmacentre.ac.uk/soldier/database/

**2-FINGER GESTURE

Legend has it that the V-sign originates from Agincourt when English archers taunted the French, who had vowed to cut off their bow fingers.

Tell me again why you are over in the desert getting shot, kidnapped, shot, beheaded, bombed and did I mention shot?

What do you think you will accomplish at the end of the day? C'mon, seriously.

I really want to know.

Simon de Bruxelles
The Times
June 5, 2009

A secret weapon intended to blast through the Nazis’ Normandy defences has been re-created to mark the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

A replica of the Great Panjandrum, a giant drum powered by rockets and carrying a ton of high explosives, will be set off this morning along the beach at Westward Ho! in North Devon, where the original trials took place.

The Great Panjandrum was never used in battle because it was judged too unpredictable and too dangerous to its own side. During testing in 1944, the prototype veered wildly off course and careered towards an audience of top brass and VIPs who were forced to flee from their vantage point on a shingle ridge. A cameraman filming the test had an even closer escape as the bomb rolled directly towards him, rockets firing in all directions.

The device was revived later for an episode of the BBC comedy Dad’s Army, in which it did just the same thing to great comic effect.

Ten workers from the Bristol fireworks company Skyburst have spent two days attaching dozens of rockets to the rims of a 2m (7ft) diameter replica made from a cable drum. The replica is expected to travel up to 500m (550 yards) at a speed of about 15mph.

Skyburst’s display director, Leigh Pittaway, ruled out filling it with explosives as the original had been. He said: “We thought about it, as we have the whole beach to ourselves, but decided it would create too many complications. We don’t want to kill any dogs or onlookers.”

The original Panjandrum would have been a formidable weapon, had it worked. It was devised by Nevil Shute Norway, later a bestselling novelist using the shortened name of Nevil Shute, but then a naval lieutenant. He trained as an aircraft engineer and had worked with Barnes Wallis, designer of the dam-busting bouncing bomb. Shute had been given the task, by the Admiralty’s Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development, of finding a way of demolishing the German seafront defences before the invasion.

The weapon had to be launched from a landing craft and be able to survive a hail of fire before detonating at a designated spot. According to Shute’s calculations, the Panjandrum would travel at 60mph on its two 10ft diameter steel wheels, smashing its way through any obstacles, before blasting a hole in the 7ft concrete of the Atlantic Wall large enough to drive a tank through.

The test ended rather badly!

North Devon was chosen for the tests because its shallow sandy beaches resembled those of northern France.

The prototype Panjandrum was built in Leytonstone, East London, and transported to Devon under conditions of strict secrecy. But the military had failed to take into account that Westward Ho! and neighbouring Appledore were still popular with holidaymakers. When the time for the test came it was in front of an audience of hundreds of visitors and locals.

As the cordite rockets were fired up, the Panjandrum rolled off a landing craft and up the beach, but it veered off to one side and continued to do so during each attempt.

After weeks of adjustments Shute and his team felt they had solved the problem. A final demonstration was planned before an audience of senior officers and War Office officials.

Things began to go wrong almost as soon as the Great Panjandrum was unleashed. Clamps holding the powerful rockets broke and they went shooting off across the beach. Out of control, it hit a series of bumps and turned towards the pebble ridge.

Fortunately, before it could annihilate the assembled generals and admirals, it veered off again and toppled over before exploding.

The replica Panjandrum — named after a poem by Samuel Foote that ended with the line “till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots” — was commissioned by the organisers of the Appledore Book Festival to mark the launch of their brochure.

A spokesman for the festival, Lyn Callaghan, said: “It does sound like something out of Dad’s Army but perhaps we shouldn’t laugh, as it was designed with a serious purpose in mind.”