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Staff Sergeant John Balcombe. Royal Corp of Signals, 22nd Regiment of the Special Air Service, Friend. RIP.

I took these snaps with an old Instamatic, some 35 years ago, on a visit to the Somme, and Arras (where my Uncle died). That's why they're a bit grainy. Still, you can make out the trench running through the incredible Earth-acne. I believe it's the remains of the British front line, from 1916.
You have to wonder, how anyone could have lived through barrages that turned the Earth landscape into a Moon-scape?
The Gun carriage has been lying there since the Great War ended. Every year, farmers and others find many tons of rusting wire, rifles, exploded shells..and many unexploded shells too. Every year, people still die...on the Somme and elsewhere, just tilling their fields. Thus, the war never ended, in one sense... Edit: just a little addendum, re. war memorials. Though WW1 ended on the 11th hour, of the 11th month, 1918, Technically, it didn't end until 1919. This means, that any soldier who died after the war- in 1919- of wounds he received in battle, 1914-1918, would have his name of a war memorial. My Grandfather's baby brother was killed at Arras, in 1917. An older brother, however, died of wounds ( severe gassing) in 1920. His name doesn't appear on any memorial. Thus, these sad stones only give a partial picture of the dead.

I'd forgotten this one. Having got the late ferry, we were too late to find a B& B, and so we pulled up on the roadside on the approaches to Passchendaele, to sleep in the Camper. When we awoke and looked around, we could still see ditches, and former trenches, full of screw pickets ( curly metal poles that supported barbed wire), rusty barbed-wire, and bits of all mashed-up trench life like timbers, and corrugated iron. This pic shows the approaches to Passchendaele, and shows the objective for British soldiers back in 1917, in the distance, in what was to be the Third battle of Ypres. It cost the Brits some 260,000 casualities. That's just a little less than the entire population of Brighton (but in terms of young men).
German casualties were almost as bad.

John died in the Radfan and we were unable to retrieve his body,
He has no known grave and as far as I know his only memorial is the wall at the Arboretum in Staffordshire.
And that friends is why memorials are so important to friends and family of fallen servicemen and servicewomen.

jarndice wrote:John died in the Radfan and we were unable to retrieve his body,
He has no known grave and as far as I know his only memorial is the wall at the Arboretum in Staffordshire.
And that friends is why memorials are so important to friends and family of fallen servicemen and servicewomen.

It's very sad. yes, Uncle Charlie also has no known grave, but his name is on the Arras memorial, along with Alberts Ball's. Some 35,000 names of soldiers with no known grave are listed there. When you think of the total British casualties in the Iraq wars, some 179, and compare it with the 20,000 killed on the first day of the Somme...the losses in WW1 begin to beggar belief.
A cousin of mine, now sadly (prematurely) deceased served in the RAF (groundcrew) during the Aden campaign. Whether he was there, or not, during the Rhadfan emergency, I can't recall; but I know he came back a changed man. Thereafter, he tried to find solace in the bottle, and got into a lot of trouble.
That's one genie that shouldn't be released.
One mustn't forget, that for every soldier killed, there'll be another ten wounded, crippled or damaged in some way. These are the invisible casualties of war.

43rdRecceReg wrote:

jarndice wrote:John died in the Radfan and we were unable to retrieve his body,
He has no known grave and as far as I know his only memorial is the wall at the Arboretum in Staffordshire.
And that friends is why memorials are so important to friends and family of fallen servicemen and servicewomen.

"One mustn't forget, that for every soldier killed, there'll be another ten wounded, crippled or damaged in some way. These are the invisible casualties of war.

Amen,

My Father was severely injured when the Royal Navy Destroyer evacuating the BEF from the Harbour and the beaches around Dunkirk was sunk by German Dive Bombers,
He died twenty four years later in 1964 aged just 50 another casualty of WW2 whose name does not appear on any memorial.