(Pages 4-12) plus ..
9
Gloucestershire COPE Family Site.
My COPE FAMILY (continued). (Page 6 of 8)
after 11th November of course), but there was little or no food for anyone, including the Germans.
I have a number of Dad’s Army documents, the cards and a few letters he sent home, a little black notebook in which he’d made some odd notes plus German words with their English equivalent. Mum told me that on once Dad had collapsed and the German’s, thinking he was dead, had thrown him into an old hut, covered him with sacking and left him there ready for burial the next morning. When they came to bury him they found he was alive (just) and he was put into hospital. Dad never spoke to me about his experiences. He loathed the Germans and as I grew up during the development of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, I had the same prejudice; that has taken nearly a lifetime to overcome! When the the 2nd World War broke out, only 21 years after the end of the 1st, my parents, like all their generation, were devastated. Dad joined the Local Defence Volunteers, forerunners of the Home Guard, as a musketry and machine gun instructor. I was almost 13 but was determined that when I was old enough, I had to do my bit for England! Luckily as it turned out that never came about, which upset me at the time.
GO TO documents about the Chemin des Dames front where Dad was captured.
About me, MICHAEL E.W. COPE (1926 -
I was born on the edge of the London “Green Belt” in southern Hertfordshire in November 1926, between Barnet and Hadley Woods. Like many kids before the 2nd World War my education was seriously disrupted by various illnesses, and indeed the war itself, when I had a whole year off school aged 14 due to the air raids and aerial straffing that went on around London and the south east. We collected homework once a month and at the same time handed in our previous month’s written work for marking. I managed
I have a number of Dad’s Army documents, the cards and a few letters he sent home, a little black notebook in which he’d made some odd notes plus German words with their English equivalent. Mum told me that on once Dad had collapsed and the German’s, thinking he was dead, had thrown him into an old hut, covered him with sacking and left him there ready for burial the next morning. When they came to bury him they found he was alive (just) and he was put into hospital. Dad never spoke to me about his experiences. He loathed the Germans and as I grew up during the development of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, I had the same prejudice; that has taken nearly a lifetime to overcome! When the the 2nd World War broke out, only 21 years after the end of the 1st, my parents, like all their generation, were devastated. Dad joined the Local Defence Volunteers, forerunners of the Home Guard, as a musketry and machine gun instructor. I was almost 13 but was determined that when I was old enough, I had to do my bit for England! Luckily as it turned out that never came about, which upset me at the time.
GO TO documents about the Chemin des Dames front where Dad was captured.
About me, MICHAEL E.W. COPE (1926 -
I was born on the edge of the London “Green Belt” in southern Hertfordshire in November 1926, between Barnet and Hadley Woods. Like many kids before the 2nd World War my education was seriously disrupted by various illnesses, and indeed the war itself, when I had a whole year off school aged 14 due to the air raids and aerial straffing that went on around London and the south east. We collected homework once a month and at the same time handed in our previous month’s written work for marking. I managed
(Right) Mike Cope in 1946 as an RN Writer with the unfinished model sail-plane he’d designed and partially built.
(Bottom right) A group of us under-going training at No. 124 Elementary Glider Training School at Elstree Aerodrome. I’m knobbly knees 5 th from the right!
(Bottom right) A group of us under-
(Below) Michael Cope in 1944 in Air Training Corps uniform with my white flash (accepted for aircrew training)