…scanned from my archive. Luke Bennett

…scanned from my archive. My father’s early life entailed being shuttled around Europe to different schools and extended stays with various relatives as his mother and step-father kept on the run from rising Nazi powers. He talked to me about strict and abusive nuns at a parochial school, probably behind his life long dismissal of religion. When war broke out he was in Great Britain and so joined the british Army in hopes of fighting the Nazis. He knew that if he was captured with his family name of Bardenhewer, he could be shot as a traitor, so a phonebook in Trafalgar Square became the determining factor in his new name, a nice English name for a British soldier – Bennett. As things go, he ended up being shipped to Burma as a corporal in the tank corps and spent the war fighting the Japanese. Back to Legacy Project