John Smith is a local historian and had been invited to MPA to give a series of lectures. Of the five he was doing, this evening’s lecture was the one that whetted my appetite the most. He was going to talk about the Invasion in 1982. The lectures came highly recommended so I made sure I had an early dinner and made my way down to ‘get a good seat’!!
During the time of the invasion John had kept a diary and he gave us snippets of the days from the initial invasion to the task force arriving and the liberation. This included some recordings from the local radio station. He had some pieces of shrapnel which, on examination, really are very ugly jagged heavy bits of metal. John had also taken a number of black and white photographs which he left out for us to peruse during the break. Seeing the black and white photos it is hard to believe that all this took place some 29 years ago, it was only the haircuts and moustaches of the troops that helped me date the photos, Stanley
A very enjoyable lecture, he really is a very easy speaker to listen to. And there was no hard sell to buy a copy of his book!
