{"id":814,"date":"2014-06-05T09:28:20","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T08:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/blog\/?p=814"},"modified":"2016-02-21T18:28:59","modified_gmt":"2016-02-21T18:28:59","slug":"70-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/digitalstorytelling\/70-years-ago-today\/","title":{"rendered":"70 years ago today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;June 5 1944: <em>The call has come at last. We are on our way to the greatest invasion ever, feeling very cool and collected. I pray to be given the strength to go through this like a man and not loose my nerve, and hope that I may return to my little family who are so dear to me<\/em>.&#8221; &#8211; John Emrys Williams<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/diadem\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/www.aberth.com\/diadem\/images\/taid-100.jpg?resize=100%2C94\" alt=\"John Emrys Williams\" width=\"100\" height=\"94\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is how my Taid (Welsh for grandfather) began his diary entry\u00a0 on that dawn of the day of the Normandy Landing in WWII.<\/p>\n<p>He was a signalman on board HMS Diadem and he kept a diary about his life on the ship which I&#8217;ve published and maintained online since 2001 at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/diadem\/\">http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/diadem\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Although Welsh was his first language, he kept the diary in English. This may be because he was taught to write in English rather than Welsh at school; or it may be that keeping notes in languages other than English during the War wasn&#8217;t allowed. I wish I&#8217;d asked him while he was still alive.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s been both surprising and heartwarming has been hearing from the children and grandchildren of others who worked on this ship. You can see links to their stories on the right hand side of the page.<\/p>\n<p>Taid received the Russian Convoys medal from the Russian Embassy on August 14 1992. He passed away April 7 1994. He was 86 years old.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;June 5 1944: The call has come at last. We are on our way to the greatest invasion ever, feeling very cool and collected. I pray to be given the strength to go through this like a man and not loose my nerve, and hope that I may return to my little family who are so dear to me.&#8221; &#8211; John Emrys Williams This is how my Taid (Welsh for grandfather) began his diary entry\u00a0 on that dawn of the day of the Normandy Landing in WWII. He was a signalman on board HMS Diadem and he kept a diary about his life on the ship which I&#8217;ve published and maintained online since 2001 at http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/diadem\/ Although Welsh was his first language, he kept the diary in English. This may be because he was taught to write in English rather than Welsh at school; or it may be that keeping notes in languages other than English during the War wasn&#8217;t allowed. I wish I&#8217;d asked him while he was still alive. What&#8217;s been both surprising and heartwarming has been hearing from the children and grandchildren of others who worked on this ship. You can see links to their stories on the right hand side of the page. Taid received the Russian Convoys medal from the Russian Embassy on August 14 1992. He passed away April 7 1994. He was 86 years old. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2,11,22,23,26],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v18.4.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>70 years ago today - Aberth Digital Storytelling<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/digitalstorytelling\/70-years-ago-today\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"70 years ago today - Aberth Digital Storytelling\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;June 5 1944: The call has come at last. We are on our way to the greatest invasion ever, feeling very cool and collected. I pray to be given the strength to go through this like a man and not loose my nerve, and hope that I may return to my little family who are so dear to me.&#8221; &#8211; John Emrys Williams This is how my Taid (Welsh for grandfather) began his diary entry\u00a0 on that dawn of the day of the Normandy Landing in WWII. He was a signalman on board HMS Diadem and he kept a diary about his life on the ship which I&#8217;ve published and maintained online since 2001 at http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/diadem\/ Although Welsh was his first language, he kept the diary in English. This may be because he was taught to write in English rather than Welsh at school; or it may be that keeping notes in languages other than English during the War wasn&#8217;t allowed. I wish I&#8217;d asked him while he was still alive. 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This is a Digital Story I made at a BBC training the trainers workshop led by Daniel Meadows in April 2002. Click to play","rel":"","context":"In &quot;digital storytelling&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":221,"url":"http:\/\/www.aberth.com\/digitalstorytelling\/hacior-iaith-hacking-the-welsh-language\/","url_meta":{"origin":814,"position":1},"title":"Hacio&#8217;r Iaith &#8211; hacking the Welsh language","date":"January 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent Saturday in Aberystwyth at Hacio'r Iaith - the second annual Welsh-language code camp. Highlights included: A fantastic one-hour crash crowd-sourced creative session aimed at translating newly-out-of-copyright Welsh poet Gwilym Deudraeth's work into multimedia, digital stories and more. 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Villagers hunted and killed the wren and carried its body in a decorated 'house'. 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