Star date: 13th April 2013

KENNY'S STORY HAD TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY

Kenny's Story
by Phil Riley (The Memoir Club)

Phil Riley worked on the night shift at Ross Foods with a bloke called Kenny Butterworth, who originally lived near Salford Cinema before moving to Folly Lane. Phil listened to Kenny's incredible Second World War stories night after night and promised to write them down for posterity. Kenny died but Phil delivered on his promise.

Here Mike Skeffington reviews the result: Kenny's Story… engagingly written in the first person and well worth the read.

Full review here…

`I wanted to either get out or be killed on impact. I dreaded the thought of being on fire…'

There are thousands, if not millions of stories from the Second World War. Many fictional adventures as well as true accounts have been made into blockbuster films and television series, depicting the horrors and the brutality of war. Then there are the anonymous, personal, yet none the less heroic stories, the majority of which never see the light of day. Kenny's Story falls into the latter category.

Kenny Butterworth was an ordinary young Salford lad from an ordinary Salford family who, like tens of thousands of others, was caught up in world events. Kenny joined the RAF at the outbreak of war and became an 'armourer'.  This book is the true story of his trials and tribulations throughout the duration of hostilities.

He was no decorated hero, but he was certainly no coward and showed that on several occasions. His story gives a good insight into the unexciting, sometimes even mundane side of what actually happened during wartime. Kenny Butterworth's personal war effort cost him five years of his youth and almost cost him his life many times through injury and disease. He came face to face with death and somehow survived, but he saw death take many comrades.

Kenny shares glimpses of home too, as he reflects on life in and around Salford in happier times before the war. He saw many sights in India and Burma such as the awesome majesty of mountain ranges and jungle covered valleys, the splendour of royal palaces and the abject poverty of ordinary people. He also saw death and destruction in those places which brought into focus the reality that he and his comrades were living on a knife edge.

This is a story of one man's war experiences which were shared by many others, without whose courage and fortitude in what might be called, 'the backstage of the theatre of war', things would have turned out quite differently.

Credit should also go to the author, who made good on a promise to relate a friend's story, something we fail to do more often than not.  A very engaging story, competently written and well worth the read.

Review by Mike Skeffington.

Kenny's Story
by Phil Riley (The Memoir Club)

For details of how to get a copy of the book email the author priley497@btinternet.com