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I first became interested in World war II when my grandma Lena Burn died and we were helping the clear out her bungalow.

We came across a diary that my grandfather (Robert Herman Burn), had written over a 3 month period. It recorded 3 summer months in 1942. It described his experiences in the Mediterranean on board his ship - coming into Malta harbour with the dead Germans floating in the water. While they were there it was dive-bombed by German planes.

The diary also contained some notes he’d made about the coming invasion of Sicily. The most moving thing was where he’d said that he hoped my grandmother and the children (I.e. my mother) never knew what he had to go through.

Although my grandad never returned home from the war, my grandmother always kept this diary with a photo of him.

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