As a young man my father was in the Royal Observers Corps, a subsection of the RAF. When World War Two occurred he was too young to fight, and his father who had served in WW1 was deemed too old to fight.
Sometime in 1944, my father, who was aged 7 at the time, woke up one morning to find the Free Polish Army were camped in the park next to his house. As any 7 year old boy would be, he was straight over to look at their guns and equipment. They were getting ready for D-Day. It was not long before he could disassemble a Bren gun blind folded. Then one night they were gone. A day later news of the D-Day landings appeared in the local newspapers.
During the war, because his father could not fight, and wanting to do his bit, his father served in the Royal Observer Corps, and when he was old enough my father also joined. As part of his training, he learnt Morse code.
He mentioned this musing to me just a few months before his death. The opening bar of Beethovens 5th symphony, commonly known as Beethoven V, is duh duh duh daah. When written in Morse Code, that is : …-
And …- in Morse code is the letter V which in Roman Symbols is the number 5. Both Samuel Morse, and Ludvig Van Beethoven’s lives overlapped, was that just a coincidence of fate? Or was there something more to it?
We may never know