Family Stories:
We regularly receive fantastic Second World War stories direct from our listeners’ family archives.
Daring do in Burma, letters from the Battle of the Bulge, and heartfelt memories of love and loss on the home front.
In our Family Stories podcast series, Al and James read out your correspondence, reminding us of the human impact of the Second World War.
If you have a family story which you think is worth telling, email us at wehavewayspodcast@gmail.com, make sure your subject line is ‘Family Stories’.
Ep 452: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 15
Today’s family stories include the desert experiences of an Eighth Army medic, the Sicilian adventures of a dispatch rider and how wooden sheep helped fool the Luftwaffe.
Ep 449: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 14
This week’s family stories include remembering a Battle of Britain pilot, a chance meeting of two old adversaries and a tale that Spielberg borrowed.
Ep 443: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 12
This week’s family stories include an IRA man who ended up fighting for Britain and being torpedoed twice, a Scot who spent five years as a prisoner of war, a teenage sailor who braved the Atlantic and the U-boats, and a pilot who never forgave his enemy.
Ep 440: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 11
This week’s family stories include a low-level parachute jump on D-Day, tragic endings in the air and at sea, and hearing the news every soldier, sailor and airman longed to hear.
Ep 437: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 10
This week’s family stories include fighting in the might of Atlantic storms, reflecting on fighting in Okinawa, landing on D-Day and an unlikely foray into the Black Market.
Ep 434: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 9
This week’s family stories include a long and eventful walk to freedom, an airman becoming a member of a select and unwanted club and a trumpeter’s escape from Dunkirk.
Ep 431: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 8
This week’s stories include a sailor who witnessed the atomic bomb exploding and lived to tell the tale, a medical emergency solved by a POW, a training exercise with an explosive ending and parents whose paths first crossed in wartime.
Ep 425: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 6
This week’s stories take us from the skies with Bomber Command in the company of a Mad Dane, through defying the Nazis from within and suffering the terrible consequences, to the life of children under German occupation and seeing one of Hitler’s right-hand men behind bars.
Ep 409: Family Stories Series 2: Episode 5
This week’s stories take us from cricket in Australia to the skies over Nazi Germany, from life as an evacuee to setting fire to your own tank in front of Winston Churchill. Plus the story of two women facing very different forms of occupation.
Ep 399: Family Stories: Series 2, Episode 3
This week’s family stories include an act of outstanding bravery on the high seas, a trans-Atlantic friendship, a plate of dodgy sandwiches and a so-called ‘ordinary’ soldier’s war.