Tony Aston - Author
Military History
Fiction
Biographic
Published Books
WE WERE THERE...and other wartime poems - 2026
www.amazon.co.uk/we-were-there-and-other-wartime-poems/dp/1036971090
​£7.99
This anthology is Tony's debut venture into the world of wartime poetry. Inspired by wartime poets such as Siegfried Sasoon, John McCrae, Robert Graves and Dylan Thomas, Tony has written this collection of original poems primarily surrounding the two World Wars but also touching upon the Cold War and the Falklands conflict.
The poems encompass a wide range of events, places, and people relating to war, including some about groups or individuals sometimes not seen as high profile in poetry circles; the 1914 Christmas truce, women working in factories, RAF ground crews, the NAAFI, evacuees, and the omnipresent black market spiv!
Take a trip across a century of warfare, looking through the eyes of those who experienced the highs and lows, triumphs and failures, life and death.
The Jacobsons are a Jewish family living in an apartment above their tailor business in 1937 Vienna, before the Nazi Anschluss of Austria, but at a time when Jews are being increasingly targeted as a consequence of ever-increasing Austrian collaboration with Hitler's regime, before the outbreak of World War II.
Klaus Xaver Neumann is a rising SS officer destined to become the infamous Kommandant of Mauthausen labour camp, near Linz in Austria.
Lieutenant Joe Berlusconi is a tank commander with the US 11th Armoured Division, fighting his way from the Normandy D-Day beaches, across occupied Europe, before becoming part of the first Allied group to reach and liberate Mauthausen.
Experience the emotions, hopelessness and fragile friendships formed and broken, as you follow the dramatic stories of all three before the sun rises on victory day in 1945, and on the collapse of a Reich that the Fuhrer had promised would last a thousand years. But what will a dangerous and uncertain future bring........................
THIS IS HOW IT WAS - 2024
www.amazon.co.uk/This-How-Was-Directorship-Everything/dp /139999669X
£14.95
Eddie Aston was born into abject poverty in Coventry during 1921. His story charts and details his life as it unfolded over the following 65 years. His humble and ragged childhood began in a long-since-demolished slum with a single outside tap, a communal washroom, and a toilet, shared with many other households, consisting of little more than a plank with a hole in it over the top of a dustbin. Eddie tells of his mother's constant struggle to make ends meet, his father having died a few months before he was born, then his schooldays in Redditch where he worked hard, becoming selected as Head Boy but denied a place at Grammar School as he was needed to provide an income at home. He describes long summer days with friends before he was placed by government policy into an aircraft manufacturing factory in the Lake District, then volunteering for the Royal Navy as World War II engulfed the globe. Post-conflict, Eddie, working for a number of companies and now a skilled sheet metal worker, defeated odds that were often stacked against him and formed his own, successful, company in Redditch. In his narrative, he describes meeting his future wife, Jean, who was a wartime single mother, moving into their first home, having two further children, seaside holidays and much more.
THE LAST SCHOOL BELL - 2025
www.amazon.co.uk/Last-School-Bell-Ex-Pupils-Redditch/dp/1036914488
​£12.95
I attended Redditch County High School in the mid to late 1960s. I must have passed the World War 2 Roll of Honour board a thousand times without, I am ashamed to say, taking a great deal of notice of it. Today, I am proud to have been able to write the personal stories of each name on that board.
These were young men, some no more than boys, who served their country during those turbulent times. The book tells the stories of who they were, their school history, where they lived, where they served and fought and, ultimately, where they died. The book recognises those brave young men as the heroes they are, such that present and future generations, particularly those who attend, or will attend, the school, now renamed Trinity High School, will appreciate, respect and honour the sacrifices made by these men, and not simply walk past the board in the way that I did over 50 years ago.
THE BOMBER AND THE WEATHERVANE
www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Weathervane-Compelling-Unbridled-Remembrance/dp/1036909638
£14.95
This is a compelling story of wartime bravery, unbridled passion and eternal remembrance. The author has captured the drive, emotion and fervency of husband and wife, Helen and John, their story of commemorating the crew of a WWII Lancaster bomber shot down in 1944 with all souls lost, then drawing together, nearly 80 years later and for the first time, family descendants of the crew in an emotional and poignant war memorial dedication, all as a result of the finding of an old, beaten up, metal weathervane, fashioned in the shape of a Lancaster bomber, buried amongst a myriad of items for sale at a salvage yard in leafy Surrey.
In 2009 Helen and John bought the weathervane and placed it on the roof of their house where it remained for the following 9 years. Only when it was removed as part of them packing to relocate to Herefordshire in 2021 was a small inscription noticed on its fuselage, JB453-F. What followed filled their lives for the next 2 years.
JB453 was quickly identified as an Avro Lancaster bomber, built in 1943, and based at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire with 83 Pathfinder Squadron. Research revealed that the aircraft was downed by enemy fire in early January 1944 over Germany during the Battle for Berlin bombing campaign. All seven crew members, from the UK, Ireland, South Africa and Canada, were lost.
Helen and John decided that they should erect a plaque at their new home, near to the freshly erected weathervane, in memory of the fallen crew. However, Helen became increasingly resolute that the crews’ descendants should be made aware of the find, carrying out huge amounts of research across the globe, eventually locating family descendants of each of the crew.
Helen’s story was reported by several national newspapers, drawing it to the attention of the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln. It contacted Helen, advocating that the weathervane should be dedicated as a formal war memorial, culminating in a unique event in Herefordshire attended by senior military officers, the Lord Lieutenant of the Hereford representing HM Queen Elizabeth and the Royal British Legion but, most importantly, by many members of the crews’ family descendants.
In putting this story together, the author has had access to huge volumes of information from Helen, countless official records from military archives many original letters sent between crew members and their families during that turbulent time.
He examines how the Lancaster became the heavy bomber of choice for the RAF, the enormous, yet understated, role played by ground crews, the controversial Bombing of Berlin campaign, and what it’s like to fly in the famous “Lanc” today. He was truly humbled, in 2023, to find and interview a former Pathfinder Lancaster flight engineer, Dick Raymond, aged 99, in north Devon, who had served in the 83 Pathfinder Squadron at the same time as the JB453 crew and who was able to give very clear recollections about that time and what day-to-day life was like at RAF Wyton during both mission and non-mission days.
Locating the exact crash site in Germany was challenging. However, with the aid of a 1947 Air Ministry crash report and, remarkably, details from a original first edition 1943 military map that the author managed to procure, the site was definitively located at Timmenrode in the Harz mountains region of Germany. In the autumn of 2023, the author drove through Europe to meet a local archivist in the village. It was just a short drive from his home to the field where the aircraft has met its fate. The archivist was also able to provide an eyewitness journal account of the crash, another invaluable and unique piece of history.
This is indeed a remarkable and exceptional story. This second, updated, edition includes full details of commemoration services, in September 2024, at the 1939-1945 British War Graves Cemetery in Berlin, and the JB453 crash site in Timmenrode where a memorial stone and plaque was unveiled.
REDDITCH - From the Chip Shop to the Batchley
www.amazon.co.uk/Redditch-Chip-Batchley-Tony-Aston/dp/1858587441
£13.95
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Tony was born in Redditch in late 1953 and grew up in the town until he was 16 years old. In this book, he explored his memories of ordinary day-to-day life when the town, like hundreds of other towns and cities at that time, was striving to repair, rebuild and re-invent itself in the aftermath of World War II. Tony recalls the demo,loition of the old town, and the building of the new, as well as his personal memories of Christmas times, food and drink, the big freeze of 1962/63, incidents and accidents, special people in his life, radio and television, all intertwined with significant national and international events.
In this, his first book, Tony has triumphed in weaving a narrative that will make readers both laugh and cry, whilst rekindling their own memories.