Friday August 5th and at our monthly meeting we were surprised by the amount of interest that is generated by the continuing speculation that German forces attempted to land at Shingle Street in August 1940. The suggestion that they were confronted by army personnel who set fire to the sea with petroleum and many burned corpses washed up on to the beach.
The Community Hall was packed to hear various versions of what did happen there early in WW2. Our speaker was Mr Ron Clayton and his talk was entitled, "The Shingle Street Mystery - Did the Germans really land on the Suffolk Coast in 1940?"
Ron offered several possible alternative theories, but of course no hard evidence of what might - or might not have happened. The 'thirty year rule' applied to any official explanation, but when it was published several parts of it were ruled to be "not in the public interest", so not much help there! Of course Shingle street is adjacent to Bawdsey Manor and it is possible that the Germans staged an attack on that home of British Radar, but no evidence has ever been offered. Another theory was that the Political Warfare Executive, who were responsible for spreading misleading propaganda, were involved. But again that is pure speculation.
A vote of thanks was offered by our President, Mr Richard Barker.