Discovering dad’s secret war story

This year marks 80 years since the end of the Second World War. The conflict is rapidly fading from living memory as the last survivors die, and 2025 has seen the final surviving Battle of Britain pil

On 21 October 1805, smoke filled the skies over the seas west of Cape Trafalgar, a headland in the Province of Cádiz in the southwest of Spain, as a fierce battle raged. After nearly five hours of int

On a frosty New Year’s Day in 1944, a young soldier from Newcastle married the love of his life with barely four hours to spare. My father, Corporal George Bell, a conscript with the Royal Electrical

On the night of 13 March 1944, the Greekregistered steamship SS Peleus was en route from Freetown to Buenos Aires when she was hit amidships by two torpedoes, launched by a German U-boat, U-852. The t

“HAUNTED BY THE SPECTRE OF THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION”

When we think of the U-boat campaign during the Second World War, images often arise of silent predators gliding beneath the waves, steely and lethal, striking fear into Allied convoys. The myth of th