Snapper

Not at all. You have an entitlement. If you have any documentation, you can trace your relative and the medals people will issue it. It takes a while though.

I always blame Bernard....it's either him or the Chinese. It all makes sense.

Home Guard volunteers definitely conform to the Defence Medal. Well worth applying for on your relatives behalf. They earned them.

Quality call - thanks a million. Have pinged the link on to many mates. I enjoyed last weeks - a total classic. MB

Welcome Digby, Nice to have something different around the MT park. Always interested to see a bit of Warsaw Pact stuff - we have a growing collection of it on the forum - some of it very exotic. So you are in the right place for supporters. This is the mad house, but it is mostly the Friendly Forum. It's a win-win situation all round. Tony "Red" Banner - important info for you - there are no Custard Creams in Russia. Hobnobs all round - made in 1920 from shredded imperial passports. Yummy dunked in a cup of steaming hot pi...

Who was that German? Anyway Andy, welcome to the Millennium Falcon. You'll find your clogs in the cupboard under the stairs. There is a lovely view of the gum trees from the balcony of the snooker room (above the abbatoir) and on a clear day you can see the Roos grazing on the Downs. It's a shame about the traffic noise, but you can't have everything. Happy days, M

Brothers Henry and Thomas Hardwidge were from the Rhondda Valley and served with 15 Bn Welsh Regiment. On 11.07.1916 Corporal Thomas Hardwidge was wounded by rifle fire and his brother Lance Corporal Henry Hardwidge ran out to help him. They were both killed by snipers and are buried in Flatiron Copse cemetery at Mametz on the Somme. Their brother Morgan was also killed in the region but has no known grave and is recorded on the Thiepval Monument. Two other sets of brothers are buried in Flatiron Copse. It is one of my favourite cemeteries - which, again, makes me sound a trifle odd. Walking from the cemetery to the Red Dragon and then over to the Queen's Nullah is a special thing to do. Mametz Wood is privately owned like many locally, for the breeding of game birds - and I haven't ventured far into it. Grimmer and I sneaked in a little way once and shell holes etc were clearly visible. We found shell cases in the maize fields around it...or more to the point, Grimmer did. He is a relic magnet of sorts...the bastar...

That's a Renault tank - an FT17 (someone will be more accurate) and the tankette is a Renault UE. Good stuff, Steve! MB

Dunno about seeing shooting stars, I could barely see the opposite side of my street this morning there was so much frost and mist. It's like winters of old. Where has all the Global Warming gone? What I want to know about the cleverness of the Huns is, why does my wife's Mini have no ice on it while my Turkish built Toyota looks like the inside of my freezer (complete with burger wrappers).

Hey Ashey, Pick up you souvenir pair of 1000 Poster embossed clogs from the Dancing Girls dressing room, just behind the boating lake next to the scrapheap where Beckett keeps his truck. (Sponsored by Philips).

It has to be the M113. Imagine it covered with the funsters from Rolling Thunder? That would be classic. Agreed, TB, all I need is THE six numbers and not the six I usually get. Haven't had so much as a tenner for two years. No surrender. MB

I would imagine your two unidentified airmen may have been burnt beyond recognition or the graves are just parts of their bodies. What a shame a date could not be found to match names to them. Polish graves are very distinctive, as are Czech and Dutch. I have some pictures to post of them from Hong Kong. There is a Yugoslav buried at Sutton Road in Southend and I've snapped a Soviet Russian buried at Bayeux. Imperial Russians can be found in northern France from WW1 as you will know. It's a bit indvidious "collecting" grave stones, but I find them interesting - especially the personal inscriptions and seeing the vast array of emblems on British Commonwealth graves is educational. In Hong Kong I snapped one from UNRRA - a United Nations Refugee Rehab group - and a Filipino Guerilla Army officer. I want to do something fitting with all this stuff one of these days. They all count. I realise I find this all much more therapeutic and meaningful than snapping MVs and stuff, however much I enjoy it; because it is like putting something back and a little bit noble which appeals to my minimal notions of vanity. Grimmer John and I worked out an idea to make a 366 'page' memorial to them all as a kind of illustrated calendar. It would be an endless - actually continuous - task and a joy to do - hence it is a pilgrimage. It's from the heart and I would not bar former enemies from it. Seventeen year old panzer grenadiers were victims, too. More contributions please (with thanks) MB

Looks like it! Bloody nice helmet, though. ..and I knew as soon as I wrote that, that I might regret it. Keep it clean.

Fantastic stuff, Mr B. Really interesting. Many thanks for stepping out into the frost. It's interesting to hear of interwar graves and the BofB story is worth knowing more about. It just proves it is worth looking in your local churchyard or cemetery for the history on view.

One more for today. This grave is at Longueau, just outside Amiens. It's easy to imagine the poor soul buried here is one of that great number of tank crewmen killed in 1918 during the eventual repulse of the German offensives of March and April.

Closer to home - this is the grave of 2nd Lieutenant William Scott Crawford of the 14th Bn London Regiment (London Scottish). He died on 15th April, 1917 and was buried in Signal Trench cemetery at Heninal. His grave was later destroyed by shellfire and he is now recorded with a special memorial at Wancourt British cemetery near Arras. He was twenty-nine and lived at Herne Hill in London. He worked for The Times in the City Office and was a native of Arbroath.

My fine head of hair is going strong - unlike the knees. But Jack, you often go all spiritual on us, so looking like a monk won't change the effect. Are you up to cat's bum level are have you reached the saucer? Not good. You'll save on shampoo. But you will need some Pledge. M

Love the Unimog, Steve. That is a special truck you have there. Would love to snap it one of these days. Cheers, Mb

Well done Mark - you've come into the light - almost exactly. Good man.....

definitely a different shape. Glad to be of service. M

I've only just caught up with this thread. I've become a serious pilgrim to the battlefields and have heard stories from real experts, such as Andy Robertshaw, what the parysites do to places when they strip them for booty. I could not and would not buy this stuff. It sickens me. To stroll a battlefield and find a relic would be a dream to me. But whether I would keep it is a moot point. It would be a place and time thing. If you've read any of the late John Giles' books you will know he was not above keeping helmets and stuff which was still lying around in more liberal amounts during his day. Ransacking a potential grave site should mean jail for those caught. But I am biassed. I agree wholeheartedly with all the views here because what we have done individually has defined a balance. I have brought home the odd shell case and we have previously discussed the issue of UXB material. Grenades, in particular, must be the most stupid of things to pick up - but people do. Lead shrapnel balls, as Tony says, are ten a penny - but I did not know about the German steel variety. If I were lucky enough to own something like the airman's Iron Cross - not by digging it up, but by a form of inheritance; I would cherish it. It is a link to someone, enemy or otherwise, now dead. He earned it. But I would prefer it stayed with him, in that Kentish field or in a grave at Cannock Chase. Unfortunately, stealing from the dead on battlefields starts almost immediately after they die - look at Waterloo where men might have been identified but for the looting - and continues for centuries after. The difference is, after a while it becomes archaeology. It's a fine line.

On 14th March, 1942 a DC-2 of CNAC crashed shortly after take off at Kunming killing the crew and several passengers. The plane was No31 and was the last DC-2 in the airline's fleet. Two of the passengers are buried in Sai Wan cemetery. They were Major-General Lancelot Ernest Dennys MC late of the 1st Punjab Regiment; he was head of the British Military Mission to China; and Lieutenant Douglas Robson,36, of the Royal Indian Navy Volunteer Reserve. He was the son of William Robert Longstaffe Robson and Maud Mary Robson; husband of Diana Salisbury Robson, of Gillingham, Dorsetshire. It is likely he was a naval intelligence officer.

Catweazle John, there isn't much I can say to you and I can't pretend I know how you feel. That would be bullzhit. If I get the chop in January, which is 50-50 I might cry into my hubcaps - but until then I'll be soldiering on. It's quite easy really. Jack is a supreme optimist, he wants to make the best out of any situation. It doesn't work for everyone. He ain't no guru. But I like what he says and I think his heart is firmly in the right place. I look forward to seeing everybody at some time in the months ahead. I think having something to do - be it MVs, collecting bottle tops or ballroom dancing, is what keeps us sane. This is most important. I won't let the bastards grind me down - in english or latin (thanks TB!). Losing your motors after all your hard work would be tragic, but your livelihoods and families have to come first. God speed, MB

A close up of some CRS men...

This is Paris in 1968