To mark Remembrance Sunday, we have produced a podcast featuring the moving stories of two veterans who have received funding through our Heroes Return scheme to visit the places they fought.
Doug Mayman is travelling back to Lucheux, Normandy in April with his daughter to retrace his steps using World War II diaries that he kept, and Ted Hedges, who served in RAF Coastal Command, hunting for the U-Boats targeting allied convoys, talks to us about his trip back to the Azores.
Big Lottery Fund Chief Executive Peter Wanless talks about what Heroes Return means to him and the Big Lottery Fund.
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As the nation prepares for ceremonies to commemorate the heroism of a special generation on this Remembrance Sunday (Nov 14th), the Big Lottery Fund announces its latest round of funding made today across the UK enabling veterans to embark on poignant visits back to the places they saw action almost 70 years ago.
Remembering the heroism of WWII Veterans
Since launching in April 2009, the Big Lottery Fund’s Heroes Return 2 programme has enabled more than 11,300 veterans, widows, spouses and carers in the UK to go on emotional trips, home and abroad, to honour and remember those that did not return from the battlefields of 1939-1945.
These are very special people and as Remembrance Day approaches we are glad that we can pay tribute to them in this way. A huge debt of gratitude and recognition is owed by today’s society to the men and women who fought across the world during the Second World War. They built the peace and protected the freedoms we enjoy today.
Filed under: Journey, memorial, Travel | Tags: Big Lottery Fund, Death Railway, Heroes Return 2, Keelung Harbour, Lottery Funding, POW, Second World War. WW2, Singapore
Robert Day served in World War 2 in Northern Africa as a tank engineer, getting them back to the front line. This film follows his return to El Alamein, Egypt where he visits the battlefields he fought on, military cemeterys and museums.
Filed under: Lunch, memorial | Tags: 4th QOH, Heroes Return, National Lottery 15th Birthday, veterans, Winston Churchill, WWII
Last week Ron found himself at the Cabinet War Rooms in London as a special guest at the National Lottery’s 15th Anniversary celebrations. As Ron toured the venue, he came across a familiar face.
“What few people, if any, at the reception would have known is that I have a particular affinity with Winston Churchill as he was the Hon. Colonel of my old regiment, the 4th QOH and that I had attended a dinner at which he was present in late 1945.”
I would not have missed the whole experience for anything. A big thank-you to the Big Lottery Fund for making the trip possible.”
Filed under: memorial | Tags: BIG, Big Lottery Fund, egypt. world war 2, Heroes Return, HR2, veterans, WW2
This picture shows a young Jack Fowler in the middle of his friends that he saw service with in the Second World War
Filed under: Holland, memorial, monument | Tags: Holland, maize, memorial, monument, netherlands, Weert
Filed under: Holland, memorial | Tags: eternal flame, interview, memorial, Wesley
A civic reception. Coffee and pastries. The town really has pulled all the stops out. It is true that there is a deep sense of genuine gratitude for, as the teacher just said to her class of children, “the people who made Europe free”. There are special flags on the church tower and the bells are going to ring at 5 tonight . Letters from the RAF Association president and others to the Mayor of Weert.
Larry very moved at the grave. He looked at the new stones and said “They gave their yesterdays so we could have our tomorrows.”
