30-07-2017, 10:27 PM
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Passchendaele
One hundred years has passed .So many died there and so e were never found what hell it must have been .
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40767601
30-07-2017, 11:02 PM
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Re: Passchendaele
At 3.50 am on 31st of July it was a 100 years to the day that Uncle Fred my Grandfathers brother who was in the 1st Battalion the Sherwood Foresters died at Passchendaele .Fred was 23 years old and a lay preacher. In his breast pocket he carried a small bible in which was a photograph of his 6 year old nephew, my Father's younger brother.
Fred was killed by a shell and his body never found. The bible with the photograph was found by another soldier and returned to the family.
Fred is commemorated on panels 39 and 41 of the Ypres Memorial, the Menin Gate.
31-07-2017, 10:43 AM
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Re: Passchendaele
My son-in-law has gone over there this weekend, taking some British Legion members. He began researching WW1 for the history of a relative. Over the years he has become an expert, knowing where all the battles were fought and the details. For years he has been doing battlefield walks and usually in the summer he voluntarily takes groups over there, paying his own way. He recently wrote a book with chapters about all of the individuals named on his local village war memorial. A hobby that has become a passion.
31-07-2017, 11:49 AM
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Re: Passchendaele
Originally Posted by Meg
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Fred is commemorated on panels 39 and 41 of the Ypres Memorial, the Menin Gate.
The lions had originally stood on plinths on either side of the Menin Gate at Ypres. This gate was one of only two entries into the medieval fortified city. It was through this gate that allied soldiers, including Australians, marched to the battlefields of the Ypres salient between 1914 and 1918. After the war, the Menin Gate was chosen as the site for a memorial to the thousands of allied soldiers who were killed in the area but had no known grave. The memorial consists of an imposing archway surmounted by a recumbent lion and it is inscribed with the names of 54,900 dead from Britain and Commonwealth countries. It was opened in 1927.
The lions had been toppled from their plinths by the shellfire which, during the course of the war, had reduced much of the city to rubble. Both lions were deeply chipped across their backs, and one had lost its right foreleg. The other had been badly damaged on one side of its head, and major damage elsewhere had reduced it to only a head and trunk ending just below the ribcage.
31-07-2017, 12:56 PM
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Re: Passchendaele
The Hertfordshire Regiment was decimated in the first two hours of the battle.At 11am this morning the Herts at War community history project will unveil a monument to the Hertfordshire Regiment at the battlefield – the unit’s first memorial outside the UK.
The Hertfordshire Regiment’s 620 men and officers were virtually wiped out in the first two hours of fighting on July 31, 1917 – attacking near the village of St Julien on what Herts at War member Dan Hill has called the most important day in the county’s military history.
All the regiment’s officers and 75 per cent of the other ranks were either killed, wounded or captured.
31-07-2017, 01:22 PM
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Re: Passchendaele
Originally Posted by Bruce
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Did you know that the original lions from the Actually at this moment that is not true they are on Ypres for the 1917 commemorations but this is where they normally are:
no I didn't know that. It was said last night that the tail of the lions is movable and inside there is a scroll with the names of all the men who worked on them . That must be the newer ones rather than your lions I guess.
31-07-2017, 03:59 PM
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Re: Passchendaele
Last night's programme from the Menin Gate included the cast of The Wipers' Times. About Captain Fred Roberts discovery of a printing press in the ruins of Ypres, Belgium in 1916, he decided to publish a satirical magazine called The Wipers Times - "Wipers" being army slang for Ypres.31-07-2017, 07:19 PM
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Re: Passchendaele
Update on my s-i-l and his group's visit this weekend. Today they were visiting a cemetery when approached by a security guard who asked them what they were doing there and for information. He explained, the guard then went away and came back with Teresa May who spent fifteen minutes talking to them and being informed about the battle fought there.He had been invited to the opening of the Hertfordshire memorial but due to commitments with his group could not attend.
This all makes his historical research hobby so worthwhile.
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