History again repeats

Eighty years ago, 120 British commando paratroopers, my father included, dropped at midnight on the French coast. The Bruneval Raid's (Operation Biting's) purpose was to dismantle and steal one of several German radar installations along the channel coast. Radar was at the time still a nascent technology. Scientists surmised that these stations were related to successful German attacks on RAF bombing raids.

With the aid of British naval landing craft sitting in the dark waters offshore and used to return both paratroopers and radar to Britain, the raid was successful. It came with cost, two casualties, six captured, six wounded and three French civilians executed for providing aid. By February of 1942, war was well more than two years old for Britain. This was a much-needed morale boost and a great embarrassment to Hitler. After two more drops, the war for my father, would come to an end with his capture in Arnhem 1944 (Operation Market Garden) and subsequent POW internment in Germany.

Sgt. Thomas Laughland despised war and was, by no means, the gung-ho military type. In fact, postwar he never again picked up a gun. But Dad was fully and firsthand aware of the necessity of WW2 and appreciative of its seemingly impossible collective efforts and sacrifice.

My father passed away in 2014. I suspect he never fathomed waking to news of war in Europe again. I also suspect, if it were to happen, my father would know that again it would be the lunacy of a narcissistic, legacy consumed despot on instruction from his crazed and evil mind. History does cruelly and repeatedly teach.

I stand, as my father would, with the courageous people of Ukraine and their unlikely and remarkably brave President Zelenskyy.

Len Laughland

Arlington Heights