100 years ago today...

[43rdRecceReg]

Thanks for these wee, and very touching vignettes, Shaun and Aussie. Part of the reason for posting the details of Charlie, and how he was erased from history, apart from a name on a memorial and a solitary photo, is that there are also millions of other stories out there. Far and wide.We get the fuller picture by recording, and reading them....and passing them on- lest they are forgotten. Astonishingly, lessons like these are so easily forgotten: WW1, aka the 'War to end wars', gave birth to another slaughterfest scarcely twenty years later, and while we can probably think of reasons for validating WW2, I'm at a loss to give any substantial reason at all for outbreak of war in 1914, and the orgy of murder and barbarity that followed. I don't think that The Grand Duke's assassination had anything to do with it. We just seem to need war.
Another, perhaps less obvious benefit of building model tanks from WW2, (and WW1 if we could,) is that the research involved brings the enormity, and the pity of it all (as Wilfred Owen said) back again with a startling vigour...and while it's great building scale replicas of fighting vehicles; or even horribly addictive , we must never forget the people who died in them....nor the reasons why they were in them in the first place.
As for unlucky names, well..don't forget Jonah.

[Cruiser133]

I traced my fathers line back to a Great, Great, Great who was a private with an Ohio volunteer regiment in our Civil War. My Great was never shipped to Europe for the first, but my Grand Father served in the 3rd Army as it raced across France and Germany. My Father did three tours in Vietnam on the River Boats (He was a River Rat) and all came home to live full lives. Sometimes we Americans fail to grasp the enormity of the loss suffered by our European cousins. I hope threads like these continue as I find them fascinating. I read a book several years ago where a veteran from WW1 described shells disinterring dead soldiers from the last battle a year or so before. The amount of death is simply staggering and WW1 almost bled several countries white.

[HERMAN BIX]

I had the opportunity to spend a full day on the field of Gettysburg.
The walk from the 'Rebel' mustering positions, in formed lines, across the sunken road & over the fence, then up the grade to the Union positions, on a quiet day, in the open as it was then, was one filled with a profound feeling of increasing dread.
Its a long way, in the face of the enemy, under artillery and then musket/rifle fire, yet they still came............

We have all seen the movies, read the books, looked at pictures of various conflicts, but to endure the reality & do it anyway must have made each man a somehow different human than those we know today.

Gallipoli, The Argonne Wood, Normandy, Argincourt(as far as can be ascertained) Valley Forge, Falaise, Gettysburg, Caen, Waterloo, Verdun, Sedan, The Somme, Thiepval, Monte Cassino, and so many more.................
I have been privileged to have trod them all, and returned feeling humble & inept- somehow guilty for being alive, or not living a worthy enough life.
If you go to these places & feel nothing- you should never have gone.

[43rdRecceReg]

Well, I thought I would just post a few pics I took some thirty years ago of the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Verdun. Pictures, in this instance can convey more than words. The pictures are not as crisp as I'd like, as I used my (now ex) wife's
Kodak instamatic... another museum piece, along with the WW1 debris lying around. You can find bits like this at the side of the roads, in fields...everywhere.

Somme- WW1 gun carriage

Gas shell- WW1 - the Somme

Evidence of the battering Fort Douaumont received in 1916. My son in the background as a teeny. He's now 40. Time flies, but eerily not on the battlefields...

Land between German and British lines. Beaumont-Hamel- the Somme

and these are preserved tranches at Vimy Ridge where the Canadians and Brits paid a heavy price..
Incidentally, HB, if you look at the Generals at Gettysburg, those who lived and died; they all had British names and heritage: Lee, Longstreet, Stuart, Meade, Hooker, etc. Evidence, perhaps, of wherever Europeans go..especially Brits, is that they like to make war on one another. Without WW1 and WW2, the birthrate in Europe would be (arguably) a sustainable one.

[Dr Phibes]

I missed this earlier............. My great grandfather Henry also died at Arras, killed in action on 11th April 1917. He was a rifleman with the Prince Consorts Own regiment and managed to last 2 days in, or so it seems. His son (he had three) Albert, my grandfather, was just five years old when Henry was killed, such is the tragedy.
Henry's name is one of those remembered on the Arras memorial - I have never been there unfortunately but have pictures. Other members have visited I recently found out, and I'm glad he is not forgotten.

[43rdRecceReg]

I missed this earlier............. My great grandfather Henry also died at Arras, killed in action on 11th April 1917. He was a rifleman with the Prince Consorts Own regiment and managed to last 2 days in, or so it seems. His son (he had three) Albert, my grandfather, was just five years old when Henry was killed, such is the tragedy.
Henry's name is one of those remembered on the Arras memorial - I have never been there unfortunately but have pictures. Other members have visited I recently found out, and I'm glad he is not forgotten.

There could quite easily be more forum members with an Arras connection, Doc. Vimy Ridge is close by, and that took a terrible toll on the Canadians.
Here's another pic. Sorry about the grainy nature, but we didn't have Canon and iPhone cameras in those days. For those interested in battlefield diorama; the Western Front still yield its grim treasures every year (100 tons or so, I believe). For WW2 there's Kursk, in the Ukraine..
Here's a shell hole close to the former 1916 German Front Line at Beaumont Hamel (line indicated by the blurry sign). You see these shell holes everywhere, often full..as this one was, with corkscrew type barbed wire pickets (could be German of British); shells casings, and much more. The verges lining the roads along the length of the former Western Front, are often littered with piles of rusting ordnance.. The field are full of bones and bombs.

Barbed wire pickets..and more

What's grimly interesting about all this debris, is that it must have been very well made to have lasted so long I only wish modern products were as durable. But then people live much longer now then they did they
then. Life expectancy in the trenches was a matter of weeks..except for the rats the troops had for company