Hmmm, I find this difficult to believe in the same way that I find it difficult to believe that your Grandmother in Weston Super Mare claimed that most people had no idea that there was a war on during the First World War. Stories often "mature" after multiple tellings.
I'm not saying that strategic points in the road network weren't prepared to be mined but that it's unlikely that the mines were "live".
You may be right about that. It was a story my father said in conversation once. I wish now he had written it down when he was alive.
Both my grandmothers, and grandfathers for that matter, lived in Weston-super-Mare, though their ancestors came from different parts of the country. My maternal grandmother was a primary schoolteacher in London during the first world war. She returned to Weston to get married. Both my grandmothers had friends in Weston who were killed in the first world war. That's probably how I came to be born.
London was heavily bombed in the first world war, by Zeppelins and later by ordinary planes, though it's not something that gets much publicity in books or TV documentaries now. The point my grandmother was making is that Weston did not suffer the same fate as London then. It was different in the second world war.
This is an extract from some of her letters then:
1918
"At any moment we might have been struck, but mercifully we escaped the fate of North Street Poplar. We had the worst time of all last night, and I really thought our house would be next. They were fighting just overhead, and dropped nineteen bombs nearby. I counted each one, and the house shook and the door knocker knocked at each explosion. Am ashamed to write this scrawl but we expect them again tonight, it is bright and moonlit, and I don't feel very strong".
I don't think strategy and tactics are Corbyn's strong point. It's just the same with Cameron. The Tory defence minister Fallon only seems interested in disbanding more Army regiments and in the privatisation of the prisons and probation sevice. I was a bit upset when the Gloucestershire regiment was disbanded. It is now incorporated into the Rifles, whatever they are.
This Ken Livingstone's, Corbyn's pal, strategy seems to be to say "Have the police been informed" when confronted by Panzer Grenadier regiments and to tell them not to shoot to kill.. The problem with that is that the police in the Channel Islands, formerly British, were only able to give their Nazi masters a great big salute.
