Late last year, I received an email from the Czech Republic. It contained an invitation from a total stranger. The sender, Michal Holy, explained that a memorial was to be unveiled to four men who had been secretly executed near the northern town of Most. The men where my uncle, World War II fighter pilot John "Willy" Williams, and three other Allied air force officers. Official Military portrait of John "Willy" Williams on joining the RAF officers' program, December 1937. Michal, a commercial pilot and amateur historian with no direct connection to any of the dead men, was attempting to contact relatives of all four, hence the email that found me, my brother Richard and my mother. Michal wanted us to attend the unveiling, and then to join him in a very special journey. He planned to retrace these men's fateful last days on the run in Nazi controlled Europe. Their extraordinary exploits beginning with an audacious mass escape from a prisoner of war (POW) ca
With diamond rings on manicured hands (men included), my fellow passengers in the "super class" section of the hydrofoil boat appear to be native to this luxurious habitat. Women with glossy black hair and stiletto boots smile easily as their rotund companions accept food and drinks from smart dressed waitress. St Domonic's Church, a tired 17th century structure in Senado square in the Historic District. I, on the other hand, am here by accident; I intended to purchase an economy seat, but my inability to decipher Chinese characters landed me among the first class travellers. I'm on my way to Macau, a special administrative region of China. A peninsula and two island connected by bridge lying across the Pearl River Delta from its bigger and better known Hong Kong, Macau was the first European colony in China when Portugal settled it in the 16th century and was also its last colony when handed back in 1999. A lineup outside the Louis Vuitton store at the popular Wynn