Who Came Home?

This book tells the story of the author’s father, John Taylor. Beginning with the start of WWII in England in 1939, John immediately joined the armed forces. Surviving the sinking of the destroyer RMS Lancastria, with a loss of 3,000 men, John Taylor was evacuated from the beaches of Saint-Nazaire in France with the British Expeditionary Forces in 1940 by the destroyer HMS Havelock.

He was a Desert Rat in North Africa, chasing Rommel (El Alamein, 1942–1943). There are actual notes transcribed from John Taylor’s notebook at that time. He continued his military journey—some known, some not—on into the Normandy invasion, D-Day, 6 June 1944.

Also the reader will get an insight into life on the home front during that time in England as John’s wife and their three children endured struggles of their own.

John Taylor returned home in 1945, six years after joining the army, with no visible scars. But through no fault of his own, he returned home with his own demons.

No doubt suffering from shell shock, which today is called post-traumatic stress disorder, the man who came home was not John Taylor.

-- Jennifer Jasper