Saturday, August 04, 2007

Stephen Henry Michell memoires

They Were Invincible: "Stephen Henry Michell wrote this book throughout the 1960's and early 1970's. Always, he struggled to deal with the need to tell his painful story of loss and outrage; outrage toward the Nazi monsters who tortured and killed without mercy; and outrage toward the idiots that sent so many young Canadians to certain death in a meaningless raid. It is noteworthy that his outrage toward the Nazis did not extend to the German people. He realized that most of them were victims as much as were the multitude of prisoners that were starved, abused and killed at the hands of the monsters.

As well as the book, Stephen Michell was also a published composer - his most famous work being the march Men of Dieppe - and a stalwart member of the Dieppe Veteran's Society.

It has always struck me that almost nobody who went through the horrors of war is willing to talk about it. In this my father is special. He seemed to need to talk about it, to help him purge the memories that he carried inside.

Stephen H Michell has left us. He died in 1994 – 52 years after that fateful raid – but his book and his music and our memories of him live on.

This republication of his book changes very little. Photographs have been interleaved with text, a few photographs have been added, and maps have been included. The maps are current maps, meant "

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