Merry Christmas from We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Over the next 12 days Al and James are reading extracts from some of their favourite books about the Second World War. Today Al is reading from Spitfire, by Jeffrey

Part Two of James Holland’s interview with veteran Stan Perry about his wartime experiences in the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry. Stan arrived in France shortly after D-Day and was twice wounded during the final year of the war in the west.

You could volunteer to fly but you couldn’t volunteer to stop. Dr Dan Ellin, of the International Bomber Command Centre, talks to Al and James about the way in which men were judged and treated as they faced the trauma

On September 17th, 1944, the Allies launched Operation Market Garden in an attempt to create an invasion route across the Rhine and into Germany. The operation failed and with it ended any hopes of finishing the war by Christmas 1944.