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The Second World War was always something of a
fascination to me from an early age, with both my parents being in the
RAF. I was not born until 1949 but, when young, built models of tanks and
aircraft. The planes decorated the room, hanging from the ceiling, courtesy of
my mums cotton, drawing pin and a bit of airfix glue. Then later on in life I joined
the Army and spent 17 years there before surfacing again in Civvy Street
at the same time as the personal computer began to emerge. My first pc
cost me £900 and had a 108MB HDD and 8MB RAM!! Halycon days! But along
came the internet connection and I suddenly realised that I could now
research my interest in great detail. The early internet was very very
basic and had little or no info on much at all. But as the access grew and
companies began to grow online, so did the available space and my own web
site began to take shape around 1996 onwards. This was a very basic site, the domain name has
now reverted to here
which is part of my named site. After all this time
it is inevitable that the site has grown, its occupying approximately
2.4GB on the server at the moment. Anyway, here she is, my world war
two section with all my information and images and vast amounts of
contributions from all over the world, literally. Defence Depts & State
Depts have contacted me asking to
publish items in journals, I happily agreed. I actually compiled and
published a book from my world war research. On A Sailors Grave (No Roses
Grow) was published 2005 by Woodfield Press. This is all done at my
own expense in my own free time so any contributions towards site costs
would be gratefully received. Due to the
fact that I am due to officially retire in August 2014 I am now in the
position that I must make some sort of sacrifices because my net work will
disappear unless I cam amalgamate all my information under one common
virtual umbrella. I am having to do away with various domains to cut costs,
no matter how small. I was hoping maybe naively, that contributions would
cover all sites, all the time, but it was not to be. However,
www.mikekemble.com is financed to
a certain degree by voluntary donations from people whom I have 'rewarded'
with pages dedicated to fathers and grandfathers on particular topics of
WW2. And I have the necessary space on
Hostgators servers in Texas to continue, for now. Anyway - enjoy - Mike Kemble. |
