Paying my respects to heroes

I keep in touch with them from time to time and their website is very good.

http://www.cwgc.org/about-us.aspx

Interesting article on CWGC – thanks Moggy!

I applied to the CWGC for work many years ago and they give you a tour around their small museum.
One sad fact is that the Sword used on the main memorial is now often plastic. The bronze, aluminium ones get stolen quite frequently.

As a late postcript, this short piece on the work of the CWGC might be quite an interesting read if you don’t already know the lengths they go to in keeping the cemeteries perfect.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23153652

Moggy

Yes that’s the one – thanks for uploading.

I have a picture of it somewhere and it is a simple plaque on the wall set above a small floral memorial and the inscription simply remembers those who died in the raid, as far as I recall. I will try to find the picture.

I can’t upload it but my quick free translation reads ” To the French patriots who died as martyrs on the 18th February 1944 in this barbaric Nazi prison”.

Try here.
http://www.airfieldinformationexchange.org/community/showthread.php?3152-Amiens-Jail-Raid-Operation-Jericho&highlight=pickard

The beautifully looked after War graves in France are well known, but I wonder how ‘remembered’ the British graves in other parts of the world are?
My Grandfather fought at the battle of Kut in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) in 1916. He was captured and made POW. Escaped and recaptured. Then the Turks cut the soles of his feet. Nasty lot the Turks. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t escape again, and mainly wore slippers for the rest of his life, but at least he survived. We still have a hand written letter from the King sent to him on his eventual return to dear old Blighty in 1919. My Father took some photos of the gravestones of some of Grandad’s fallen pals during a business trip to Iraq in the 70’s. The graves were well kept back then, but a lot has happened since. Here’s a bit about the Kut battles:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kut

Funny how according to Wikipedia they were not fighting Turks, but ‘Ottomans’. Just as in WWII we apparently weren’t fighting Germans, but ‘Nazis’.

What an interesting and informative thread. My thanks to all who have contributed so far. Somehow I think there may be more stories coming forward as a result of this.

Hamilton Airshow, June 2013.

In the light of that, I’ll persevere with a letter to the prison govenor and see what transpires. I’ll put the result on this forum.

Both my children have or will be going on the WW1 school trip .I hope that it makes them appreciate what they have today.

Guys,your respect and admiration for the fallen shines through with each post that’s made,I hope one day to make a pilgrimage to pay my respects to all those that fell,
The photo of the field….lost for words,so poignant.

I have a picture of it somewhere and it is a simple plaque on the wall set above a small floral memorial and the inscription simply remembers those who died in the raid, as far as I recall. I will try to find the picture.

I can’t upload it but my quick free translation reads ” To the French patriots who died as martyrs on the 18th February 1944 in this barbaric Nazi prison”.

There is a memorial near the entrance, but it is to members of the Resistance who died there. Nothing relating to the raid as far as I could see, though I must admit my attention was on the breach.

Moggy

Following a Forum members visit to Amiens Prison, who commented that he did not see any memorial to the Mosquito raid on or, adjacent to, the prison walls, I drafted a letter to the prison govenor in English, gave it to a friend whose language skills are a deal better than mine to translate into French. Before sending it, he made some prior enquiries and discovered that there was an existing memorial (no details of shape and size) placed by the prison entrance.

If any member is heading to that part of France and has the time to make further enquiries and perhaps take a photo, that would be useful.

It’s worth mentioning that the Imperial War Museum run a Memorial Archive section or department. They are keen to obtain information on the location and condition of all war memorials that are there as a result of British military action. I will check their records for any details held concerning the Amiens raid.

What a fantastic thread…many thanks to all of you who contributed.

My students have educational, behavioural and social difficulties;

I know you’ve already been thanked for taking students on tours, and I wholly concur, but as someone who went to just such a school, thank you for working with those who in my day were termed “maladjusted”. It can’t be easy, but some of us have derived huge benefits from people like you.

On the morning of November 20th 2007, we stopped in Trescault and walked down the old Argyll Road to Ribecourt-la-Tour*, a few hours over 90 years since my grandfather had done exactly the same journey in full kit behind the tanks as they crossed the “impregnable” Hindenburg Line. Perhaps the easiest action the 11th Essex ever saw, they lost just a handful of men – less than ten. Four months to the day later, they were not so lucky – caught in the teeth of the German spring offensive, they took 90% casualties and grandfather spent the rest of the war in POW camps.

Adrian

*all splelings approximate!

Nice to see people still visiting Pickard and Broadleys graves at Amiens. Just 25 kilometres away lies the third man lost on the raid that day. St Denis Eglise cemetery at Poix de Picardie is the last resting place of New Zealander Flt Lt Richard Webb Sampson. He is often forgotten or overlooked when it comes to remembrance sadly.

Excellent thread..

A way to get it over to them is to ask their favourite football team

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_football_stadiums_in_England

Then point out that on day one of the Somme there were 59,000 casualties

http://www.essentialsomme.com/articles/casualties.htm

That is the total capacity of one of all but the biggest football grounds in one day either killed or wounded…..

Frightning and drags it into perspective.

Rob,
Brilliant thread and thanks.
I shall be up at the woods in September.
As someone who was also once there said….

“Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz–
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench–
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?”

As ever Kev, top line interruption.

Keep up the good work.

Andy.