A most prized posession

Undoubtedly my best ever Christmas gift arrived this year, curtesy of my long-suffering other half – I’m now the very proud custodian of  a world war 1 death penny. I’ve managed to narrow it down to having been “earned” by one of a dozen or so men who share the name on the penny. More detail on the Badges and Pins page, along with a picture.

Thank you Natalie

A big thank you is due to fellow knitter/blogger Natalie, who has kindly let me filch pictures that she took of her local war memorial this morning. It isn’t one I’m likely to be able to get to to take my own pictures, so I’m really pleased about that. I’ll post pictures on the memorials page, but here’s a taster

 

 

An update from the council

Following the invitation I had to the dedication of the memorial tablets to the West Yorkshire [Prince of Wales Own] Regiment, there was a short but moving ceremony held in the local cemetery today. It was the first really wet day for weeks, but there was still a fair sized crowd there to pay respect. Two of the local ministers officiated, reminding us of the way of life the volunteer soldiers would have had at the turn of the century[20th] and , of course, of the motto of the regiment “Nec aspera terrent” [ Nor do difficulties deter.]

The next time the war graves have a ceremony in this cemetery will be on Remembrance Day, when all of these old soldiers will be remembered along with the ones who already lay there.

Going to see the soldiers?

I was talking with the assistant curator of one of our local regiments this week, when I realised that a lot of the search results on the web page had a “no image available” logo in place of an appropriate picture.  The first search I’d done on their site was one of these, and I knew that I had an image which would fit the bill.  Cutting a long story short, it appears that the museum would be really grateful for pictures of any graves from thier regiment that could be sent in and added to the website. I’m sure this would apply to other regimental museums, too. 

So, if you’re going to see the soldiers – whether a personal pilgrimage, or a general visit to some of the War Graves, do bear this in mind. Just a few pictures would be welcomed, to add to what the individual archives already hold. I think the way I’ll do it is to take photographs of graves from this local regiment, as I already have a link there. 

Alternatively, if you want to work in a bigger way, it’s worth thinking about the British War Graves Photographs Project which is cataloguing all of the cemeteries individually.  They already have lots of completed cemeteries, so it’s worth checkingout the web page before you start clicking. 

If that’s too daunting, and you don’t have a big trip planned, it’s always worth a trip to the local cemetery. We went yesterday to one a few miles from us, looking for a WW1 Memorial, and found a handful of war graves amongst the regular graves, one of our local regiment.  Sadly, the whole cemetery was quite neglected and very overgrown, but every one of those otherwise derelict war graves had the remains of a little poppy cross – presumably from last Remembrance Day.  If you don’t know of any personal connections, it’s also really interesting to see if you can do a bit of research on an individual that you don’t know. More on that in a later post………

A message from the council!

I hadn’t anticipated that my first “proper” posting here would be reporting that I’d had a message from the local council! In short, when I arrived home today, there was an email to say that two memorial plaques that have just been cleaned up after being in store for years, have just been put into place with the War Graves in the local cemetery. There’s an official ceremony later in the month, but I wanted to go down and see how they looked. Well done to the people who worked so hard on this project to get the plaques back on show in a suitable location, especially Steve Shaw-Wright who took up the cause. In April Cllr Shaw Wright told the Selby Post

“We’ve been looking for somewhere to put them for some time but we’ve never had anywhere suitable to put them.

“We thought it would be a good idea to put the memorial stones where the Second World War stones are, so they are in one place. It just seems a fitting place to put them.”

The top pictures are of the plaques in the  cemetery chapel before cleaning up, the bottom pictures show them in place alongside the War Graves in the main cemetery.

I went to see the soldiers

The blog title comes from the first line of a remembrance poem written by Kenny Martin in 2003. It seemed an appropriate working title, though may evolve to something else as this new blog takes shape.  I first went to see the soldiers in October 2008, totally unprepared for how a short visit to the battlefields would reshape my life. This blog will explore some of the  things that have cropped up [and taken over!] since then. I’ll post book reviews and things on separate pages, but will link from here, too.  Please feel free to make comments, so I know if I’m posting the right sort of things to be of some interest/use. I’m a real novice as far as military history goes and happy for people to tell me where I’m going wrong. My concern is that we learn more about the wartime lives of our not so distant relatives,  so that we really don’t forget, and don’t let the horrors they lived through happen ever again.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them