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YEOVIL IN WARTIME
CHIMNEY SWEEP
A personal look back to the Somerset town of Yeovil in the Second World War IN a new book published by Fonthill Media, Jack Sweet takes a personal look back to Yeovil during the six momentous years of the Second World War and during the time when he grew up. He tells of the air raids, how people rallied to civil defence, welcomed thousands of young evacuees in 1939 and again in 1944. How people dealt with the many trials of a population facing and enduring total war. Sitting for hours in uncomfortable air raid shelters hearing German bombers flying overhead and wondering where bombs would fall on Yeovil. How the townsfolk saved to buy a destroyer and a Spitfire, and ‘Saluted the Soldier’, as well as hearing the roar of aircraft engines from the Westland Aircraft works and watched Lysanders, Whirlwinds and Spitfires flying overhead. Also, they enjoyed the ‘friendly invasion’ of the US Army preparing for D-Day, saw them go off to battle and finally the joy of VE- and VJDays. Total war meant that no-one in the town, young and old alike, escaped unaffected. Jack Sweet was born in Yeovil and on leaving the RAF in 1958, became a local government administrator and took early retirement in 1992. In 1997, his first Somerset-themed book, Shocking Somerset: Murders of the Nineteenth Century, was published followed by ten more, including three with co-author Robin Ansell, and Yeovil in The Great War 1914-18 published by Fonthill Media (2014). Sweet’s interest in military history has taken him to many former battlefields from South Africa to the Crimea via the USA and Europe. Yeovil in the Second World War, ISBN: 978-1-78155-7907 is illustrated with many rare and unpublished images and is now available. For more information visit www. fonthillmedia.com
46 The Marshwood Vale Magazine September - 2 2020 Tel. 01308 423031
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