Retinal Occlusion (Paperback)

Paperback. The genesis of this book is probably the most diverse and complex of any I have attempted to write.I will try to explain it before you delve any deeper.My academic background is an historian. Indeed, my first degree is in History and Problems of Historical Evidence.Within those loose confines I listened intently to the stories my parents told of growing up near London during the Blitz of World War 2.But it was one of my dad's stories which really impacted while I was drafting this book.My late father was a young chorister at the church of St Mary the Virgin in Farnham Royal in Slough - some 23 miles from the centre of London. The nearby Britwell trading estate was a focus of German bombing during World War 2.Dad remembered the High Duty Alloys (HDA) factory at Britwell, which was near to The Artel Works factory making precision instruments for the Mosquito bombers, being hit in July 1940. He witnessed the funerals of those who perished at the church where he was a chorister.But for many years the high impact bomb on the HDA factory remained a "mystery of World War 2".Recent research has concluded that the bomb may have been dropped by mistake by an RAF Bristol Blenheim bomber returning from a failed mission over Germany.But the bigger shock for my father came in October 1940 when German bombs exploded on land adjacent to the church.Dad and his young friends were traumatized when attending church for choir practice to find body parts from the graves of the recently interred scattered across the churchyard.This memory resonated recently while I was watching the brilliant 2021 movie The Shadow in my Eye - aka The Bombardment - on Netflix.It is a Danish war drama written and directed by Ole Bornedal tells the heart-wrenching true story of Operation Carthage, the 1945 British air raid on Nazi-occupied Copenhagen that went horribly wrong.The Nazis occupied Denmark. With their numbers dwindling, the Danish Resistance repeatedly sent requests to Britain to carry out an air raid on the Gestapo headquarters located in the heart of Copenhagen.On 21 March a squadron of RAF Mosquito light bombers left RAF Fersfield to carry out their surprise attack, codenamed Operation Carthage.But during the raid the unthinkable happened. While the Gestapo HQ was hit, several bombers mistook the Institut Jeanne d'Arc school for girls as their target. By the end of the mission, 19 adults and 86 children were killed when the school was mistakenly hit.Ole's daughter Fanny Bornedal stars as a young nun/teacher at the school who dies alongside one of the little girls in her care.As is often the case, the first casualties of war are children and innocence.But whereas the 86 children who died at the Jeanne d'Arc school in 1945 were as a result of a tragic accident. Today, at the time of writing this book, some 18,000 innocent children have been killed by the deliberate Israeli genocide of civilians in Gaza.We appear to live in a world of perpetual war, where innocence is slain daily.The 1945 tragedy in Copenhagen brought the current situation in Gaza - and now Lebanon - into sharp contrast.Everything is bound together by religion, a church, a mosque and a catholic school.The final knot which ties this book together, comes with the original title to the movie: The Shadow in My Eye.Exactly one year ago, in November 2023, I was diagnosed with Retinal Occlusion (blindness) in my left eye.Treatment for this condition involves monthly injections into that eye of a steroid named Eylea.The medication is slowly working and the shadow in my eye is clearing.So, during the past 12 months I have begun looking more closely at the world around me and at last see Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.…