DURING the Second World War, Ned Blamey was an RAF ground crew engineer with a fighter squadron based in the South East.  

In early June 1944, his unit was on its way to an airfield in Cornwall when they received an order to divert to Portsmouth.  

Something big was about to happen: but no-one was being told what or when.  

Ned and all the other “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force” were issued with a letter from General Eisenhower on the eve of D-Day, June 6, 1944. 

Ned recalled how, in addition to all their usual duties in refitting, servicing and repairing aircraft, there was now a mad scramble to paint black-and-white invasion stripes on all the planes.  

“So many aircraft! So many stripes! We ended up dreaming about painting the blooming things in our sleep,” he once said. 

Ned’s squadron, like so many others, played a vital part in the D-Day campaign. Eisenhower’s letter clearly meant a lot to him: he wouldn’t have kept it otherwise.  

Ned married a local girl, Mary Snow, and the family lived in the Crediton area for many years after the war.  

Ned and Mary were members of Crediton Area History and Museum Society (CAHMS), and Mary was a previous treasurer.  

Our thanks to Ned and Mary’s daughter, Joan Rutterford, for sharing this letter and this personal story of a local man’s link to a major turning point in the Second World War. 

CAHMS