Of women and children. A group of African Leaders are currently in russia for a crucial meeting with president putin. This comes after their visit to ukraine as part of a Peace Mission aimed at resolving the ongoing conflict between the two nations. Now on bbc news. First hand accounts from veterans of the Second World War in episode one of � we were there. You were shot at, shelled, bombed, mortared. And yelled, let the bombs go from the aircraft. How many young people did we actually kill . We looked to the aircraft and the whole of the back of it had been shredded with shell splinters. If the sergeant says, jump, you said, how high . We just did whatever we were told to do. I in the sand, the only way to survive seemed to be try and get shelter of some kind. Because of the 12 of us, only eight of us had come back. Four of our crews had gone, including one crew who were on their very first trip. It was a sunday. I was in church with my mother and father. And i remember hearing the bishop getting up in the pulpit before his sermon and saying, were now at war with germany and i thought, how exciting gosh, an adventure and little did i know what was in store for me. Our division was putting told to capture a range of hills to the north of tunisia. It took a month of solid fighting. You were shot at, shelled, bombed, mortared, everything. And you got that dreadful feeling of sickness in yourtummy. Oh, god. Is this going to be the last time . Sometimes, you were lucky. Sometimes, you werent. I was lucky. I think towards the towards the end before the end of april beginning of may, i think they thoiught i think they thought that they were they really had had it and they were surrendering quite a lot. They stopped Counter Attacking and i think that was the time they realised that they were on the defeated side. At the time, if you didnt kill the other chap, he killed you. That was it. Capture the objective. Fight. Kill people. Awful, isnt it . I mean, ive killed ive killed my fellow man. Im not proud of that. When i eventually got into a into a hospital, i said to the nurse, can i send a telegram to my mother and father . Send a telegram to my and she said, oh, yes certainly i said, wounded. Bullets left arm, left leg. Not serious, should survive. I thought that might amuse them, and it did. Chuckles i loved the desert. I thought it was absolutely perfect. Something about like being on the sea, in a way. You could go in any direction. There was a great sort of freedom attached. Beautiful, smooth smooth surfaces, sand and impossible great bother great sand dunes. Some of the maps were very, very blank. I mean, i had a big chart they were naval charts, really, with a lot of latitude and longitude lines and in some cases, i had one chart which had just a few little speculative hatch lines on it and a camel track and a dotted line across it which was labelled suspected camel track. Well, i thought David Stirling was a first class man. Very highly intelligent, highly motivated who actually was a motive part in many ways in the founding of the sas. Who was also a person who managed to recruit about 80 chaps who he thought had the requirements that he needed, and one of his major requirements was he wanted people who would be able to get on with each other in difficult circumstances, so those early operations were conducted as far as possible and in great secrecy, were brought up we were all brought up to keep the whole thing totally under hat. Well, they make very good stories, theres no denying. Refuelling our vehicles, mr sadler . We go tonight. Rock music plays get the tents up stop being too creative call me mike. But they were all part of the business, really. You had to put up with it. It was not something that people would join at the time very often. Well, it was exciting to be shooting off at things yes, i suppose it was. Certainly, we didnt think of ourselves as war heroes. We were i dont think we were war heroes. Its i think its a term which is much misused. I went up to newcastle with a friend and went into the recruiting office, asked the Recruiting Sergeant if i could join the northumberland fusiliers. I was only an 18 year old boy. I was scared of my mum and dad, let i was scared of my mum and dad never mind the nazis and the ship i didnt know this at the time, i was down in the hole with Everybody Else i was down in the hold with Everybody Else the ship turned into the mediterranean and the next thing i know, were in land, in a port, and ifound out it was the Port Of Algiers in north africa. Very scary for an 18 year old boy whod never been out of north shields, yeah, but we just got on with it. You know, i mean, if the sergeant says, jump, you said, how high . And we just did whatever we were told to do and thats the easiest way to get on in the army. If the sergeant or the corporal says do it, you do it. A lot of the time, i was trained in weapons. But because i had a little bit of a problem with one of my eyes, they thought that a rifle wasnt a good idea for me. And so, they put us on bren guns. In fact, for a period of time in africa, i was a twin bren gunner, and that meant that i was sitting on a very small vehicle with two bren guns pointing backwards with the convoy was in front and i was like tail end tommy watching for aircraft attacking from behind. Or if i was at the front, then i did the same again. But they thought because of the eye problem, that i was better with the twin bren guns rather than with a rifle. On occasions as you were driving along particular roads, everything was fine, no problems. And it happens just like that. You hear a buzz, you look up, theres Somebody Throwing Bits and pieces at you, so you fight them back. Do what youre trained to do turn your machine gun in the direction of whatever it is thats attacking you and let go. Yeah. It happened that many just like going out in the dry and getting wet. When i was about 19 and i was living near Hampton Court bridge, a german aircraft came over and lobbed out a bomb and it landed on the other side of the road to me. It was a good job it was a light bomb because being a heavy one, i shouldnt be here talking to you this afternoon. Well, if i had an incentive tojoin the air force, that wouldve been given greater emphasis and i thought, i must go out and join the air force and you never know, i might be able to catch up with this chap, but of course, i never did. And as youve been an instructor, i take it you would like to go on instructing . And i ratherfoolishly said, no, sir. I want to get to grips with the enemy. Very quite unaware that the enemy only too happy to get to grips with me anyway, i was then sent to a night Fighter Training School because i wanted to become a night fighter. And one day, somebody came from don bennetts pathfinder group. He came across and said, if theres anybody here with 1000 flying hours, i would like to recruit them into our Bomber Command night flight striking force. And i thought, well, thats for me. I saw this rather elderly navigator with a canada flash on his shoulder. He must� ve been all of 28, so he was quite an old man. Have you crewed up with anybody . Nope, he said. So i said, whats your experience . And he said to me, well, ive been an instructor a Navigation Instructor at Prince Edward island. So, i said to him, youve found yourself a pilot. And i think we made a very good team. He was, without question, the very, very best navigator on the squadron. And i was incredibly lucky to have had him as my navigator. Archive taking over on the tarmac, a line| of new mosquitoes ready to display their prowess in the air. The mosquito is the great aeronautical success of the war. British inventive genius has produced a formidable air weapon with a reputed speed of over 400 miles an hour. Here are pictures to carry in your minds eye when next you hear of our mosquitoes having been in action. I think on the fifth raid was on berlin. Now berlin was about the most heavily defended city in the whole of the third reich. And if you are going to be shot down, it was most likely to occur there. And i remember on this particular occasion, i allowed myself to be caught by a salvo of anti aircraft shells, and it lifted up the aircraft and it caused both engines to stop. They werent damaged, itjust interfered with the carburetion. And after what seemed like six months, i suppose it was a matter of about 30 seconds, the engines restarted and we found, we worked our way out of berlin. And i turned to him and i said, doug, you werent frightened were you . And he said no, i wasnt frightened, i was bloody terrified laughs the scariest raid, without question, was when i was picked up by a jet fighter. The me 262 had what was known as air to air radar. Once it got a visual on you he would give you a blast of cannon fire and you would cease to exist, because the fire from an me 262 was formidable. In my aircraft i had what was known as radar detection equipment. So as soon as he turned on his air to air radar, i got a signal in my cockpit. And then i would take immediate evasive action, as i did, by Dropping Down 10,000 feet and altering course. And my navigator was complaining bitterly and saying to me, well, how do you know . I cant see him. And i said, a very good thing too, because if you could see him, he could see us, and we would be dead. So i cant afford for you to be wrong. And i dodged in and out of the sky and all over the place, and eventually i took him down low, because when you get down low, jet aircraft consume large quantities of fuel. And i knew this chap only had 45 minutes from the time that he took off to the time that he landed back at base. And i thought sooner or later, hell have to pack it in. So he went home, and i lost him. I was working one day in darlington and i thought oh, to pot with this, and i walked across the road to an raf recruiting office, and i said, id like to join the raf please, the chap said very good sir, come on in and take all your details, and that was it. In a bomber, then, i was in halifax bomber, you would have seven people. A pilot, a navigator, a bomb aimer, a radio operator, two gunners and a flight engineer. And all the lads that i were with were all canadians. And really, you did have to look after each other and look after yourselves. And we managed to get through 31 operations in Bomber Command. As the flight engineer, you had to make sure that mechanically everything on the aircraft worked perfectly. And you had to act as second pilot. At take off here from leeming, we call a bombing raid over germany and youd let the bombs go from the aircraft, and you could see these bombs exploding on german soil. And the number of people being killed. And i used to think about it. You knew it was happening, but you tried to forget it that you were bombing civilians. Its a funny feeling, you know, to be involved in war, and to be killing people, and knowing youre killing people, and also thinking not knowing, but thinking that there was a reason and a right in doing it. But since then, ive realised that there wasnt a right, and there never will be a right for people to fight each other. Never ever. And theyre things you cant forget, you cant change. Theyre just there. And you are stuck in memories. The flight engineers position was inside the stilling, out of sight almost. And you couldnt see out, and i was objecting to this in my letters home. Still got all my letters, my mother kept all my letters, they are still there. And i was complaining about the fact that that i may not be able to see anything, like a young lad, as i was. Our very First Mission was to a place called salbris in the middle of france, it was a big Ammunition Dump and a factory. It had been french, but taken over by the germans. I was in the front of the aircraft, i happened to look up and there was a little flicker of light and i shouted combat, which meant there was a combat between a fighter and a lancaster. I couldnt see it but it was up there somewhere. So, right boys, keep your eyes skinned. And the gunners, wed get our guns and whizz the target around and focus on it and see if he could see something. And it was just like that. We came back, we were in the dining hall, four empty tables. Because of the 12 of us, only eight of us had come back. Archive 20,000 bombs dropped in the 24 hours | preceding the landing. The softening up of the german defences on a broad stretch of coast. We took off at about three oclock in the morning and it was quite a normal day, nobody told us it was invasion day. The target was the place where the americans were landing and it was ourjob to bomb it a bit to help the chaps on the ground. And as we turned away, we happened to notice in the distance, four little planes. German fighters, fokker wolfs. The best of them, fastest of them. And my rear gunner, wally, was shouting, get into the cloud , there was a cloud base, it wasnt very thick but we were being told to stay above but he was shouting, get into the cloud , and we got into the cloud. And Bomber Command, the killed rate was almost 50 , plus all the wounded and the rest of it. But half when i signed on, i didnt realise i was almost signing my life away. Today, we have seen the cloud brings them heavy downpours, particularly across the west. Most of the cloud is very high, some Hazy Sunshine for many. A few light showers spreading across parts of england and wales. Maybe the odd heavier one into Western Scotland and the west this afternoon, but fairly isolated. A greater chance in Northern Ireland, central and western areas. Humid out there, even though temperatures down in recent days. 26, the moray coast. 2526 in 25 26 in the east of england. And you will notice the humidity at edgbaston, too, especially in the spells of Hazy Sunshine. The chance of showers diminishing this afternoon tonight into tomorrow, low cloud in the north sea drifts towards them eastern coasts. A few showers dotted around and potentially some thundery ones in the south east later, by the biggest story i think for most of you is that it is going to be a fairly muggy night once again. Temperatures need to hire teens mid to high teens. Cambridge is in the high teens to start sunday morning. It could be quite great for some. A few isolated showers to begin with but then as temperatures rise in the morning, into the afternoon, more will blossom into life. Some pretty severe thunderstorms across parts of east wales, central and southern england, Northern Ireland and south west scotland. But rainfall amounts will vary greatly, many still staying dry. Some of the driest conditions will be across scotland through the day. Sunday evening into sunday night, those showers could merge into longer spells of heavy rain. Eastern and northern england, drifting into parts of scotland. Across northern england, some minorflooding. Things have been very dry. A soggy day for parts of central and northern scotland. Brightening up to the south of that, a few light showers initially, a few thundery showers later on. Difference on monday compared with sunday will be the feel of things. Not quite as humid but still pretty warm in the strong sunshine overhead. High if not very high pollen levels over the next few days. A few showers, varying rain amounts and turning humid towards next weekend. Showers, varying rain amounts and turning humid towards next weekend