#Essex Regiment

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1920 – IRA 3rd Cork Brigade personnel attacked a lorry carrying British troops from the Essex Regiment at the Toureen Ambush, on the road between Bandon and Cork.

Up until the ambush the 3rd West Cork Brigade Flying Column had not before engaged the British troops stationed in Co Cork in a proper battle. The Brigade had finished its training and to get it ready for combat it had to get in an engagement with the British soldiers. Under Tom Barry at Toureen, near Ballinhassig, on the old main road between Bandon and Cork city, at 4 a.m. on 22 October 1920,…

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Phil Murphy Conducts Massed Military Bands Overseas," Windsor Star. April 20, 1943. Page 3. ---- WELL known in Windsor as a band conductor, Bandmaster Phil Murphy, WO. 1, who is overseas with the Canadian Armored Corps, is seen at the right conducting a Canadian Armored Corps band somewhere in England. In the picture at the left, he is seen conducting massed military bands in a concert at Hyde Park during the Wings for Victory Campaign. "There is not much sign of war, is there?" he observed in a note attached to the picture which shows the huge turnout. Bandmaster Murphy was in charge of the brass band of the Essex Regiment (Tank), now the 30th (R.) Reconnaissance Regiment, before he went overseas.

[safedistancefrombeingsmart]

Martin Freeman begins the D-Day 80 service by reading the memories of veteran Joe Mines

Joe Mines, 2nd Battalion Essex Regiment, landed here on Gold Beach 80 years ago today. He joins us and allowed me to share these memories with you: “I've never been back here, for 80 years. I’ve often thought “What do I go back for?” After all the terrible things I’ve seen. Like a picture book, up there, I can visualise everything.  I landed on June the 6th 1944 at a place called Vers Sur Mer. The Germans pulled back, so it allowed us to clear the mines on the beach.That was the 1st job I got, clearing mines. All over the place they were. Joe Mines clearing mines. One of our fellas trod on one and blew his leg off. The whole leg went. War is brutal.  Back when I signed up, I met a fella on the train. I went to Normandy with him. But he got killed within about an hour of landing here. He was only young. I was 19 when I landed, but I was still a boy. I don’t care what people say. I wasn’t a man. I was a boy. And I didn’t have any idea of war and killing. I was lucky. Yeah, I had lots and lots of luck.  So why would I come back? Well, this is the last and only opportunity for me.The last there will ever be. And it’s because of the lads. I want to pay my respects to those who didn’t make it.  May they rest in peace. “

[whencyclopedia]

Horatio Gates

Horatio Gates (1727-1806) was an English-born general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Initially viewed as a hero for his stunning victory at the Battles of Saratoga, Gates' reputation was later tarnished by both his involvement in the Conway Cabal to replace George Washington as army commander, and his catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Camden.

Early Life & British Service

Horatio Gates was born on 26 July 1727 in Maldon, Essex County, England. He was likely the son of working-class parents Robert and Dorothea Gates; his mother, a housekeeper for the Duke of Bolton, was able to use her position to secure opportunities for her family that otherwise would have been out of reach. For instance, through her friendship with the waiting-maid of the Walpole family, Dorothea Gates managed to get future English writer and politician Horace Walpole (who was 11 years old at the time) to be the godfather of her son. In 1745, 18-year-old Horatio Gates was able to purchase a commission as an ensign in the British Army, largely thanks to the influence of the Duke of Bolton.

The young Ensign Gates has been described by biographers in unflattering terms; one characterized him as a "little ruddy-faced Englishman peering through his thick spectacles" and a "snob of the first water" (quoted in Boatner, 412). He first served with the 20th Regiment of Foot in Germany during the War of Austrian Succession (1740-1748) before volunteering to travel to Halifax, Nova Scotia, to serve under its governor, Edward Cornwallis; Cornwallis was not only an early mentor to Gates but also the uncle of Lord Charles Cornwallis, who would one day face Gates on the battlefield. Promoted to the rank of captain in the 45th Regiment of Foot, Gates saw action against the Mi'kmaq and Acadians in Canada. In 1754, he married Elizabeth Philips, daughter of a Nova Scotia councilman, with whom he would have one son, Robert (b. 1758).

In 1755, as the French and Indian War (1754-1763) was escalating in North America, British General Edward Braddock was sent to lead an expedition to capture the French-held Fort Duquesne and thereby assert British control of the Ohio River Valley. Gates traveled to Fort Cumberland, Maryland, to join the expedition, where he would have met several other men who would one day also play key roles in the American Revolution including Daniel Morgan, Thomas Gage, Charles Lee, and, of course, Lt. Colonel George Washington of the Virginia militia. Braddock's Expedition set out on 29 May 1755 and made it to the Monongahela River a little over a month later, where it was ambushed by French troops and their Indigenous allies. General Braddock was killed in the ambush, and a large portion of his army became casualties including Gates, who was wounded. The survivors retreated to friendly territory.

After the Battle of the Monongahela, Gates was mainly relegated to positions of military administration, something at which he proved exceptionally talented. He served as chief-of-staff first to Brigadier General John Stanwix and then to Stanwix's replacement, Robert Monckton. In 1762, Gates accompanied Monckton in the capture of Martinique. Although Gates did not experience much combat during the expedition, he was nevertheless tasked with bringing news of the victory to England and was rewarded with a promotion to the rank of major. The war ended the following year and Gates returned to England, only to realize he had little future in the British Army; the limitations put on him by his social status meant that he could not advance much further in the military than he already had. Frustrated, Gates sold his major's commission in 1769 and, with assistance from his old army comrade George Washington, moved to Virginia with his family. Gates purchased Traveler's Rest, a Berkeley County plantation next door to Washington's younger brother, Samuel. As Gates began his new life as a Virginian planter, he also purchased several enslaved people to labor in his fields.

Continue reading...

[rnsulentic]

Prussian Hussar regiment No.1, the Green Hussars. Green indeed. Essex 15mm figures, GW contrast paints mostly.

[ltwilliammowett]

Mary Anne Talbot - a female Soldier and Sailor

Mary Anne Talbot is one of the women who have the adventure of serving at sea disguised as a male sailor. She was born in London on 2 February 1778, the illegitimate daughter of William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot. Her mother died at birth, her presumed father when she was four years old. She was brought up by a wet nurse at Worthen in Shropshire until she was five, after which she attended a private boarding school in Chester, run by a Mrs Tapperly, until she was 14. The only relative she knew was an elder sister, an Hon. Miss Dyer, who also died quite young in the birth of her child in 1791. She enlightened Mary Anne about her presumed parentage before her death and left her a handsome fortune of £30,000 sterling. From this fortune Mary Anne could have had an annual income of 1500 pounds, but her sister's chosen guardian, a Mr. Sucker, did not provide for her further education, but gave her to Essex Bowen, a captain in the 82nd Regiment of Foot.

Mary Anne Talbot, by G. Scott, after James Green, published 1804 (x)

The latter took her to London, where he made her his not-so-voluntary mistress in 1792. But already in the autumn of 1792 he was to go to Flanders and simply took her with him. To this end, he passed her off as an errand boy, who took her to St. Domingo as John Taylor. From there she went to Flanders, where she was now listed as Drummer Boy. As such she took part in the capture of Valenciennes on 28 July 1793, where Captain Essex was killed. She now deserted the regiment and made her way through Luxembourg to the Rhine, until in September 1793, out of necessity, she signed on as a cabin boy to the captain of a French lugger called Le Sage. The lugger, according to her account, had been captured by Lord Howe in the Queen Charlotte, and "Taylor" (as she still called herself) was assigned to HMS Brunswick 74 guns under Captain John Harvey (1740-1794) as a powder monkey, in which capacity she took part in the great victory of 1 June 1794, but was severely wounded by a grape shot that shattered her left ankle.

Captain Essex with his footboy John Talbot (x)

She spent four months at Haslar Royal Naval Hospital in Gosport. She then became a midshipman on the Bomb Vessel Vesuvius. However, this was captured off Normandy by two French privateers. As a prisoner, Taylor remained in Dunkirk for 18th months. After her release, she signed on with the American ship Ariel under Captain John Field, sailing to New York in August 1796. In November she returned to London on the Ariel. There she was picked up by a press gang in Wapping. In order not to have to re-enter the Royal Navy, she revealed her true gender, whereupon she was discharged. She then haunted the Navy's pay office for some time, and various donations were collected for her. But she was intemperate and spent her money frivolously. The Duke and Duchess of York and the Duchess of Devonshire, it is said, interceded for her.

Mary Anne Talbot resisting a Press Gang, by John Chapman (x)

After a series of employments including a gig as a jeweller's assistant or a performance in a small theatre in Tottenham Court Road in the Babes in the Wood, and a stay in Newgate from which she was rescued by the Society for the Relief of Persons confined for small Debts, her misfortunes forced her to take refuge as a domestic servant in the house of the publisher Robert S. Kirby in St. Paul's Churchyard, who recorded her adventures in the second volume of his Wonderful Museum, 1804 and continued her story in  The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Anne Talbot, 1809. After three years' service, a general deterioration, caused in part by the wounds and privations she had suffered, rendered her unable to work regularly, and she was removed to the house of an acquaintance in Shropshire at the end of 1807. There she remained for some weeks, and died on 4 February 1808, aged 30.

Mary Anne Talbot, by G. Scott, after James Green, published 1804 (x)

Perhaps some of you have noticed that there are certain similarities to Hannah Snell. And in fact, her story is very much in doubt. Because there are great inconsistencies with the times and the ships that she had given in her biography. Because there is no Talbot on the ships listed and there was no Talbot on the Vesuvius at the time it was captured, and the capture itself is also questionable because the ship was not off Normandy at that time but in the West Indies. Whether she just mixed things up here or whether they were chosen to spice up her story is questionable, and it cannot be ruled out that this story was a product of fantasy.

[scotianostra]

19th January 1644 saw a Scottish Covenanter army of 20,000 men under the command of Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven move south into England and their civil war supporting Oliver Crowmell.

Sit doon and get comfy, this will be a lengthy post, for the start of this post has it's roots in The English Civil War it takes us right up to the Jacobite Uprisings and the split in loyalties between King and country.

The 17th-century civil war may seem a very English affair, but that is misleading – it was started and ended by Scots.

We all know a bit about the rise to power of Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army; the Battles of Worcester and Naseby and Marston Moor that ended with the execution of King Charles I, to me it marked the beginning of the end of the Stuarts, and it all seems a rather English affair, recently, however, historians have preferred to call it ‘The War of Three Kingdoms’, since both Scotland and Ireland were inevitably drawn into the dispute. It is easy to see why the older version prevailed for so long.

To me the internet has helped people, like myself understand history better, we can seek out so many sources so easily, at school, if you were lucky you got a text book with the one version being "gospel" but even on here I have been called out for getting things wrong, well in the eyes of the person calling me out I certainly will concede certain ground, but history as well is how you perceive it, what to put in my posts and what to leave out. I rely on some people to keep me right in some respects, and I can't hold a torch to some peoples knowledge of certain aspects of our history, I take my hat off to the likes of my friends, Marti Morrison, or Roland Obrien whose Jacobite knowledge can put me to shame, these guys live and breath the history, wear the outfits, walk the battlefields and have done for years, mere mortals like me scour the archives piecing together from many sources, like todays post, giving an understanding of events that has been lacking in the classrooms when the super info-highway was still drifting out in space.

Anyway back to the post in hand.

The English story is clear – the extravagant and naïve Charles pitted against the unglamorous and hard-headed Cromwell over a clear point of principle. The Scottish story, however, is much more ambiguous.

Indeed, if the ‘English Civil War’ might broadly be dated from 1640, when Charles I dissolved the ‘Short Parliament’, to 1660, when General Monck restored Charles II to the throne, the ‘Scottish Civil War’ could be said to have run from 1637 to 1744, and the final defeat of the Jacobite cause.

Lets start with simple question: to whom did Charles I surrender in 1646? Not to Fairfax, Essex, Ireton or Cromwell, the leading lights in the English Civil War, but to the Scottish regiment encamped at Newark, led by Alexander Leslie.

Charles, who had of course been born in Scotland, and always had a problem with the Scottish Kirk, who maintained that while the King had authority in matters temporal, they had authority in matters spiritual; and often where one ended and the other began was a point of serious contention. Time and time again I go back to pointing out the Stewart/Stuart, mantra of Devine right of Kings.

James VI as the first King to "rule" over the two Kingdoms of Scotland and England got away with having two forms of worship by not getting too involved with them, Charles however was much more headstrong, his first, and some say biggest mistake was the introduction of his own prayer books on the Scottish Kirk in 1637. It caused a riot, with one woman, Jenny Geddes, purportedly throwing her stool at the minister and shouting ‘daur ye say Mass in my lug?’ They saw it as being to close to the "Popery" of the Catholic church, it led to the drawing up a ‘National Covenant' which was a solemn agreement inaugurated to reject the prayer book and any meddling by the King in their religion. Don't underestimate this agreement a staggering six hundred thousand Scots signed the document, in any age, it stated that as long as the king protected the Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church would protect the king. There was the rub.

Charles, forgetting that the word ‘thrawn’ could have been invented to describe the Scottish Church, sorted refused to sign, leading to the so-called First and Second Bishops’ Wars, the latter ending with Montrose and the veteran of the European wars Alexander Leslie in control of Northumbria and County Durham. Charles had to recall the English Parliament for financial support – the ‘Long Parliament’ – and precipitated his war with them.

Parliament now opened negotiations with the Church. Although there were many mutual areas of agreement, the Church of Scotland held both the Independents and the Puritans at arm’s length.

Nevertheless, Westminster and Edinburgh both signed a successor document to the Covenant, the Solemn League and Covenant, which brought the Scots into the fray on the side of Parliament. Even before this, Montrose had already switched sides, concerned that the Kirk was attempting to usurp the power of the Crown.

While Charles was fighting Cromwell he still held out hope that the Scots could wield and come to his rescue, perhaps this is why he surrendered himself to Leslies army and not the Roundheads. What did for him was English gold. The Scots had been promised much and were financially insecure, so in exchange for their prisoner, the English Parliament paid Scottish debts, Leslie's army had not been paid as promised for allying themselves with Cromwell, with this settled Charles was handed over, eventually to be tried and executed.

The execution of Charles was a turning point. The English had killed the legitimate King of Scots without so much as a by-your-leave. Charles II was proclaimed King of Scots in Edinburgh, and the head of the ‘Engagers’, the Duke of Hamilton, beheaded in London.

Under the Treaty of Breda, Charles II signed the Covenant; an act he did so in supreme bad faith. He needed allies not disputations on theology. Cromwell addressed the General Assembly over the Scots defection, saying: ‘I beseech you, in the bowels in Christ, think it possible ye may be mistaken.’

When the Assembly decided they were not, Cromwell launched a punitive strike against Dunbar, capturing it from Sir David Leslie, ( his brother, Alexander by now aged and retired) beside whom he fought at Marston Moor. Three thousand Scots were killed and 10,000 captured. By the Battle of Inverkeithing, Cromwell had effective control of everywhere south of the Firth of Forth.

But the Scots were intransigent. In the last battle of the ‘English Civil War’, the Battle of Worcester, the majority of the 16,000 strong Royalist force was Scottish. Around 8000 Scottish prisoners were sent as indentured labourers to the West Indies and Canada, starting a relationship with those regions that would have significant influence in later centuries. Leslie was sent to the Tower, and released a decade later on the successful Restoration of Charles II and the death of Cromwell.

The Scots had instigated the war on their insistence that they were religiously and politically different from England. One unforeseen consequence was that Cromwell’s Commonwealth was the first time Scotland and England had the same governance, he is acknowledged as the only an to invade and control all of Scotland, a feat Longshanks, Edward I never quite accomplished.

Charles II did not heed the lessons of what had happened to his father, and his attempts to create ecclesiastical uniformity led to the ‘Killing Time’ between 1680 and 1688. Even more bizarrely, after the English Parliament invited William III to take the crown, in favour of the Catholic King James VI and II, some Covenanters fought for the Stuarts against the new regime. The misery of war and religious schism makes for strange bedfellows indeed.

At the root, perhaps, of the problem was the difference between the Scottish and English experiences of Stuart monarchy. The Stuarts had ruled Scotland since 1371 and England since 1603. They may have been weak, injudicious, opinionated, divisive and profligate kings – but they had been our kings for a much longer time.

[overland-defender]

04/06/2022 - Day 1

The location for the group to meet was just a stones throw from Pegasus bridge located in Bénouville. Here we met some familiar faces from a previous BF4x4 tour we did a few years ago. As always an introduction and agenda was shared where most of this tour will be spent in the Calvados (Normandy) area. Today's agenda Pegasus Bridge Memorial Ranville War Cemetery Colleville-Montgomery - The Hillman Fortress Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery Arromanches-les-Bains - The Mulberry Harbour/Port Winston

Memorial Pegasus  As you would've guessed our first stop was indeed Pegasus bridge memorial/museum, now i'd imagine most would know this but the original captured bridge has been relocated away from the canal and the one you drive/walk over is a replica. The site is dedicated to the men of the British 6th Airborne Division who were the first Allied troops to arrive in Normandy on the night of the 5th/6th of June 1944 where a small detachment of the 6th British Airborne Division surprised the German garrison guarding the bridges. The BF4x4 guides arranged for a guided tour to walk us through step by step how the assault unfolded and we were even lucky enough to meet a veteran - Well worth a visit.

Ranville War Cemetery

1.4 kilometres down the ride (3 minute drive) is the Ranville War Cemetery. Ranville was the first village to be liberated in France when the bridge over the Caen Canal was captured intact in the early hours of 6th June by troops of the 6th Airborne Division, who were landed nearby by parachute or glider. Many of the division's casualties are buried in Ranville War Cemetery.

The cemetery contains around 2,236 Commonwealth burials of WW2, 90 of them unfortunately are unidentified and 323 German graves. The churchyard also contains 47 Commonwealth burials, one of which is unidentified, and one German grave.

One grave of interest was of Private Emile Corteil, he was from Watford in Hertfordshire and served with A Company, 9th (Essex) Parachute Battalion. Corteil was the dog handler for the company, and his dog was called Glen. Both parachuted into France with their company on D Day, Emile was killed on D Day aged 19 years; Glen was also killed and the two were found lying together.

Colleville-Montgomery - The Hillman Fortress

From Ranville we head 7.5km northwest to The Hillman Fortress which sits south of the town Collevill-Montgomery. The Hillman Fortress was a command post among the German coastal defences on the Normandy beaches which was built between 1942 and 1944.

The 1st Battalion, Suffolk Regiment liberated the site on the 6th of June 1944 but took longer than expected. The delay in taking the bunker complex has been cited as a reason for the Allies not completing their major D-Day objective of taking Caen. We were fortunate to experience a camp reenactment, this entailed enthusiasts dressing up as allies and Germans with decommissioned weapons and WW2 vehicles. 1940's radio's playing war speeches and also the Jive music like 'Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy' by The Andrews Sisters. It's honestly awesome to be amongst it and i'm sure many have got bitten by the reenactment bug. Once we had completed many laps of the camp and the fortress we has a spot to eat in the back of the 110 mainly cheese, ham and baguette (continental lunch) before heading off to our next destination of the day.

Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery

Whilst in convoy heading west over the CB radio Keith informs us that we will be stopping off at another war cemetery, but this contains mostly Canadians. Many of those buried were of the 3rd Canadian Division who died either on 6th June or during the early days of the advance towards Caen, when the Division engaged the German 716th Division and the 21st Panzer Divisions. As you look around any war cemetery it is hard to really comprehend that each headstone represents a lost life and though i'm stating the obvious it's just an overwhelming experience.

Arromanches-les-Bains - The Mulberry Harbour/Port Winston

And just when you thought the day was drawing to an end, when arriving at our accommodation for the next couple of nights which is the very nice Chateau de Bellefontaine. The guys at BF4x4 explained after checking in and freshening up we have a table booked at La Marine which overlooks Gold beach, where the remains of the Mulberry Harbour/Port Winston lie. It was part of mission overlord, where the objectives at Gold Beach were to - Secure a beachhead - Move west to capture Arromanches  - Establish contact with the American forces at Omaha - Capture Bayeux and the small port at Port-en-Bessin - Link up with the Canadian forces at Juno to the east

The forces attacking Gold beach faced the German 352nd Infantry Division and German 716th Infantry Division and there were around 350 ally fatalities.

Mulberry "B" (British) was the harbour assembled on Gold Beach at Arromanches for use by the British/Canadian forces. The harbour was decommissioned 6 months after D-Day as the Allies were able to use the recently captured Antwerp port. The harbour was operated by 20 Royal Engineers under the command of Lt. Col. G C B Shaddick.

That will be enough about the history, the food at La Marine was fantastic and the on the house calvados shot (cider brandy) definitely opened up the airways. Based on Day 1... tomorrow is going to be another epic day.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Wilfred Owen: the man not the memorial

All a poet can do today is warn.

- 2nd Lieutenant Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (1893-1918)

The body of Wilfred Owen’s work is generally regarded as a memorial to the atrocities of war. Often heralded as one of the finest poets of the First World War, Wilfred Owen has become a symbol to many of 1914-1918 encapsulating a sense of futility (the title one of his more famous poems), anger, and despair at the suffering endured by the soldiers during the Great War, or indeed any war before and after.

Poems like ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ convey the intense futility of it all, for “what passing-bells for these who die as cattle?”, whilst he evokes the disturbing psychological impact of the fighting in works like ‘Mental Cases’ where “these are the men whose minds the Dead have ravaged”. The canonisation of such works has preserved Owen as a symbol of the First World War and a reminder of its horrors.

This is not without challenge of course. Owen’s was only one voice representing one point of view and cannot be seen to capture the myriad of views and feelings of all the combatants and his generation, but at the same time that is not sufficient reason to dismiss his work as irrelevant to the study of the War.

More interesting to me is the feeling that Owen’s poetic legacy has put aside the man that was Wilfred Owen. Every schoolchild knows at least one of his poems but know very litte of his life as a man and as a soldier. It is easy to forget that he too was a flesh and blood man fighting in the trenches, with his own hopes and fears, uncertainties and complexities.

Born in 1893, Owen was teaching English to children near Bordeaux, France, when war broke out in the summer of 1914. The following year, he returned to England and enlisted in the war effort. On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles Officers' Training Corps. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. On 4 June 1916 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in The Manchester Regiment. By January 1916 he was on the front lines in France. As he wrote in 1918, his motives for enlisting were twofold, and included his desire to write of the experience of war: “I came out in order to help these boys - directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can.”

On April 1, 1917, near the town of St. Quentin, Owen led his platoon through an artillery barrage to the German trenches, only to discover when they arrived that the enemy had already withdrawn. Severely shaken and disoriented by the bombardment, Owen barely avoided being hit by an exploding shell, and returned to his base camp confused and stammering.

A doctor diagnosed shell-shock, a new term used to describe the physical and/or psychological damage suffered by soldiers in combat. Though his commanding officer was skeptical, Owen was sent to a French hospital and subsequently returned to Britain, where he was checked into the Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers in Scotland in 1917. There he was officially diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia (‘shell-shock’). 

It was there he famously met Siegfried Sassoon and his poetry took on a new direction and life. Owen spent the first part of 1918 in England training and recuperating. He did a short spell working as a teacher in nearby Tynecastle High School, he returned to light regimental duties. In March 1918, he was posted to the Northern Command Depot at Ripon. A number of poems were composed in Ripon, including "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His 25th birthday was spent quietly in Ripon Cathedral.

In recent years much work has been done to restore Owen’s humanity, most notably Dominic Hibberd’s 2002 work Wilfred Owen: A New Biography, which, whilst clearing up other details of Owen’s life, confirms that he was gay. On one level that shouldn’t matter. But interestingly facts like this could cast some of his poetry in a new light, with particular regard to the vivid and sometimes shocking sensuality and even excitement that is undoubtedly present in poems like ‘The Sentry’, where “thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping/ And splashing in the flood, deluging muck”. An idea of the attractiveness and lure of war could possibly develop from this interpretation, particularly as Owen, like his friend Siegfried Sassoon, returned to the front line after absence.

Indeed whilst Owen's work rises above that of many contemporary poets, the circumstances surrounding his death at such a young age (25), and the news of his death, has added to the powerful emotions that surround Owen. Rejecting offers by his friends to pull strings and arrange for him to sit out the rest of the war Owen chose to return to the front to help the men he felt he had left behind. Owen’s battalion was part of the spearhead used to break the final German defensive line after a series of Allied advances following success at Amiens in August 1918. On 1 October 1918, Owen led units of the Second Manchester's to storm a number of enemy strong points near the village of Joncourt. For his courage and leadership in this action, he was awarded the Military Cross.

Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice which ended the war, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. A key problem was to overcome the Sambre canal defences and gain the Eastern bank, and on 4th November at 5.45am Owen was involved in the attempt to cross. The exact details of that morning are hazy, and all that is known is that Owen was seen leading and encouraging his men in the early part of the struggle, but was killed, possibly as he crossed the water on a raft, sometime between 6 and 8.00am. Famously the telegram notifying his family of his death arrived mid-day on November 11th as the celebrations around the Armistice rang out.

These are facts known to all of us. But what I found really eye opening was going to the place where he spent his last night before his death. It puts a different perspective on Wilfred Owen, not the poet, but the man and the officer who cared deeply for his men under his command.

Owen and his platoon had spent the previous night in the cellar of a Forester’s House in the wood outside Ors. Ors is mere two hours’ drive from Calais in the Nord-Pas de Calais region. It’s a small village and if you walk across the canal you can church bells tolling. To right and left the countryside resembles a French Impressionist painting. The waterway is lined with tall, leafy Poplar trees; there are meadows full of cattle, the hills beyond roll into the distance - an idyllic scene, glowing in the spring sunlight. It’s hard to conceive of the ghastly sights, sounds and smells that once shattered this tranquil landscape.

When I was driving with friends around there we visited key sites that marked the First World War. When we got to Ors we came across Forester’s House, now a memorial to Wilfred Owen. We were told by that by some villagers that a great number of British visitors came looking for Owen’s grave and the exact spot where he had been killed, and asking to visit the cellar of the Forester’s house. And so a grassroots campaign amongst locals began to raise funds to commemorate Wilfred Owen properly. British artist Simon Patterson along with French architect Jean-Christophe Denise took seven years to design a suitable memorial - by re-designing the building into a place for reflection and meditation - which eventually opened in 2011.

The tiny cellar remains bare and untouched, but the 18th century house above has been transformed into a 21st century sculptural object, its entire brick facade painted stark white to resemble bleached bone, the original roof encased and glazed to form a face-down open book. The gutted interior is now a sanctuary, lined by translucent glass panels, each etched with fragments of original text from Wilfred Owen’s best-known and much-loved works, complete with his corrections, scribbles and crossings-out. The drafts bear testament to the poet’s struggle with the barbaric absurdity of war: “My subject is War, and the pity of War.” Included are lines from Dulce et Decorum Est, Anthem for Doomed Youth, The Dead Beat, Strange Meeting, and Spring Offensive; each poem backlit by waves of coloured lights activated by the recorded voice of actor Kenneth Branagh playing inside the room. Branagh’s stirring readings pitch the poems across the open space. They rise and fall from the walls and reverberate around the roof lights, before flowing out into the l’Évêque forest beyond.

It’s an impressive memorial and a powerful place, made all the more effective by being so simple. Unlike other war museums, there are no artefacts, no tanks, no weapons or uniforms. It was created as: “a quiet place that is suitable for reflection and the contemplation of poetry,” gently glorifying the art that has come out of the chaos and tragedy of war.

It’s all the more remarkable that the local French took the initiative because Owen was pretty much unknown in France - but today his poetry has been translated into French for schoolchildren to learn and reflect upon the pity of war.

We visited the cellar and I tried to imagine what Owen’s last night was like. I could empathise from my own experience of the battlefield out in Afghanistan waiting to leave on a night time or day time mission in my helicopter. As any soldier will tell you,  everyone has their own coping mechanism to deal with the pre-mission nerves and unspoken anxieties. Some hide it better than others. I tried to imagine Wilfred Owen’s state of mind.

Thankfully we can have a good idea because he wrote a letter. Billeted in the cramped, smoke-filled cellar of a forester’s house in woods near Ors in late October 1918, Owen took time to write to his mother. His mother was to receive his letter on 11 November, 1918, the day the Armistice was declared, along with a telegram informing Susan and Tom Owen that their beloved son had died in action seven days earlier. The words of that last letter home are carved now into the stone wall of a curved walkway that leads to the brick-lined cellar of the forester’s house.

Entering the cellar, you are struck by how crowded it must have been that night when 29 soldiers were holed up here, smoking like chimneys.  As you begin to absorb the surrounding a recording begins of Kenneth Branagh reading Owen’s last letter to his mother.  It is observant, amusing - and deeply moving. Owen’s letter was designed to reassure his mother, saying nothing about the impending attack, but instead poking fun at his comrades that he cared deeply about.

To Susan Owen
Thurs. 31 October [1918] 6:15 p.m. [2nd Manchester Regt.]

Dearest Mother,

I will call the place from which I’m now writing ‘The Smoky Cellar of the Forester’s House’. I write on the first sheet of the writing pad which came in the parcel yesterday. Luckily the parcel was small, as it reached me just before we moved off to the line. Thus only the paraffin was unwelcome in my pack.  My servant & I ate the chocolate in the cold middle of last night, crouched under a draughty Tamboo, roofed with planks. I husband the Malted Milk for tonight,  & tomorrow night. The handkerchief & socks are most opportune, as the ground is marshy, & I have a slight cold!

So thick is the smoke in this cellar that I can hardly see by a candle 12 ins. away, and so thick are the inmates that I can hardly write for pokes, nudges & jolts. On my left the Company Commander snores on a bench: other officers repose on wire beds behind me.  At my right hand, Kellett, a delightful servant of A Company in The Old Days radiates joy & contentment from pink cheeks and baby eyes. He laughs with a signaller, to whose left ear is glued the Receiver; but whose eyes rolling with gaiety show that he is listening with his right ear to a merry corporal, who appears at this distance away (some three feet) nothing [but] a gleam of white teeth & a wheeze of jokes.

Splashing my hand, an old soldier with a walrus moustache peels & drops potatoes into the pot. By him, Keyes, my cook, chops wood; another feeds the smoke with the damp wood.

It is a great life. I am more oblivious than alas! yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, & the hollow crashing of the shells. There is no danger down here, or if any, it will be well over before you read these lines.

I hope you are as warm as I am; as serene in your room as I am here; and that you think of me never in bed as resignedly as I think of you always in bed. Of this I am certain you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here.

Ever Wilfred x

At dawn on 4th November 1918, the bodies of hundreds of soldiers littered these fields. Bludgeoned, blinded, blown to smithereens, their hopes and dreams ended in the first minutes of brutal engagement as they floundered through a blasted land, thick with mud, blood and the gory detritus of war. They lost their lives horribly in a futile attempt to claim a few extra inches on the map of Europe at a time when both sides knew the First World War was over, and to carry on fighting was a cynical, cruel waste of time and the lives of men wanting to go home alive to their loved ones.

After the action, shocked survivors found a pair of standing bodies - an English Tommy and a German Fritz - welded face-to-face in death by the impact of their bayonet charge. On that day, England lost more than its fair share of brave men. In their midst lay a poetic genius whose compassionate and skilful writing still stirs the souls and breaks the hearts of millions of readers almost a hundred years after his death. After all these years, Wilfred Owen’s bleak words: “I am the enemy you killed, my friend,” continue to carry across borders and speak to nations about the foolishness of war - its horror, grief and waste - and the terrible impact warfare still has on the world today. Second Lieutenant Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC now lies alongside 30 of his fellow soldiers buried beneath pristine rows of crisp white headstones inside the compact War Graves Commission Cemetery at Ors.

Any doubts of Wilfred Owen’s incredible bravery arising from his mental breakdown in 1917 can be quickly dispelled by his decision to go back to France. It is this little detail that is so often overlooked that truly lends pathos to the war poetry of Wilfred Owen. This is central to Owen’s complex identity that is lost by the reductive perspective of him as this mythic anti-war herald, and not as a man of immense sacrificial courage and an unspoken sense of personal duty to others.

Owen is not the only poet of the war era to suffer this arguable ‘dehumanisation’. Of course it is important to recognise what these figures reveal about war and its impact, but we must not lose sight of the men behind the symbols and thereby rob them of their humanity and thus their very human sacrifice. When we remember those who have lost their lives, our thoughts must be of the men, not just the memorials.

[transthadymacdermot]

(Detail from James Gillray's political cartoon Evidence to Character: being a Portrait of a Traitor by His Friends and by Himself)

Wip intro: Eight Grams of Gold

Genre: historical fiction, courtroom drama, elements of cosmic horror

Progress: 1st draft

POV: 3rd person limited

Setting: 1795 - 1796 in Ireland + some scenes in England and France

Content warnings: gore / death / abuse / a variety of place-and-time-typical forms of bigotry / cannibalism / etc

Things have not improved for the RRL characters. A stolen shipment of guns, a dead landlord, and now a bizarre personal feud sparked by one man giving another a guinea, which spirals out of control into an esoteric legal battle which threatens to consume everyone and everything. And of course, in the mean time, the spectre of rebellion is looming, and as it is now the year 1796, the clock is slowly counting down.

First, there is Sarah Connolly, a peasant woman, whose son, Frederick, stabs and kills the landlord during the family's eviction. Seeking preservation above all, she sells the body to the innkeeper at the local Essex Arms inn, and washes her hands of the business, content to not ask questions about what innkeeper Lazarus McClure, whose mental stability has been going steadily downhill since the conclusion of the last story, will do with the body and content that she and her family will be safe under their roof for at least another quarter. That is, until it comes out that the Englishman who was meant to inherit his wealth, Charles Nathaniel Maurice Irving-Hamilton, 4th Viscount of Drenning, was recently disinherited in a fit of rage on the part of the man who Frederick stabbed. And the man who will now inherit is a mere bookbinder, a nobody, a tradesman, who infamous aristocratic spymaster Lady Maria Whittaker is incensed to discover will soon be on the same social level as her if he is allowed to acquire the land and the title that would have been Charles' -- who is a bad inheritor, but a suitably titled one.

Whittaker digs up a will. It would seem that the title once came with a lot more land, was severed from it quite by accident in the 1740s, and should, following rather the spirit of the law than the letter, belong to the brother-in-law of the object of Whittaker's very mutual unhinged psychosexual obsession, William Rearden. It isn't too difficult to convince this brother-in-law to contest it. Everyone wants to be a lord, after all. Only, the man who is now a lord refuses to give Whittaker's puppet a thing -- save for a single guinea, handed to him outside church one day as a deliberate mocking gesture. And what's worse, Rearden, who despises his brother-in-law, told him to do it.

AKA: now that I've lured u in with a story about gun-running I will make you listen to me talk about the 18th century Irish legal system for a billion million words ❤️

Ask to be +/- from the taglist!!!

Main Characters

Anthony Franklin -- (he/him) a man of science and lover of liberty from Scotland. A genial family man who loves his friends and chafes at all forms of authority.

Lady Maria Anne Whittaker -- (she/her) a Jacobite-descended Englishwoman whose job it is to get supplies to France, no matter who has to die for it. Loves, apart from herself, her sister.

Eoin O'Donnell -- (he/him) a Defender leader, now on the run from the law. Considered "odd" and "not right" but liked for being very good at terrorism. Has a terminal case of Catholic guilt.

Sarah Connolly -- (she/her) an Irish Catholic peasant woman trapped in an unhappy relationship. Blames herself for a lot but blames other people for more and someday that's going to end very badly for them.

Frederick Craig -- (he/him) Sarah's 11 year old adopted son, recently hired as a drummer boy for the local regiment. Holds a confused ball of resentment within his chest. Has strange dreams.

Annie Craig -- (she/her) Sarah's 12 year old adopted daughter. Considered a touch odd but liked well enough. Determined to find some justice in the situation she finds herself in.

Charles Irving-Hamilton -- (he/him) a worthless Englishman who did not even want to come to Ireland for his uncle's funeral. But he is willing to stay if he can get some entertainment out of ruining this legal battle.

Lady Eliza Durham -- (she/her) a scheming landlady. Has been playing this game a long, long time, long enough to be sure of her ability to best anyone else on this list.

Edward "Lazarus" McClure -- (he/him) a resentment-filled, Derry-born, oak branch-wearing, sham-fighting inn owner. Loves his current fling and Winstanley; hates his father and the law.

Francis "Frank" Borden, Gerald O'Neill -- the new inheritor and Rearden's brother-in-law, respectively.

[asparklethatisblue]

Hello Val. What's your favorite fiction book? And your fav nonfiction? Hope you feel better soon.

non fiction? For sure In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. It’s so good, absolutely gripping and really well structured in when and where it explains the history of American society, and economy and various health effects of what the crew of the Essex is going through. You can really see why hearing about these events would have inspired Moby Dick

fiction? Monstrous Regiment, or The Master and Margarita… they’re both really good…

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in 1921 – Tom Barry and the West Cork Flying Column routs a superior force from the Essex Regiment at Crossbarry.

A force of 100 IRA members under the leadership of Tom Barry are involved in a major skirmish with up to 1,000 British troops at Crossbarry, Co Cork. English intelligence had determined that Barry’s West Cork Brigade was based near Crossbarry and planned a major encirclement and assault. Poor planning and timing ensured the 1,000 plus British forces got separated before attacking Barry’s men.…

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Hairdressers Launch War Stamp Drive," Windsor Star. January 12, 1943. Page 5. --- FOUR Miss Canada Girls attended a meeting of the Hairdressers Association of Western Ontario in the Prince Edward Hotel last evening, inaugurating a war savings stamps campaign by the hairdressers. Seated are Mr. J. Edgar Young (left), manager of the Windsor office of the Wartime Prices and Trade Board, and representative of the National War Finance Committee here, and Acting Mayor Arthur L. Mason. At right is Mr. Robert G. Cohen, chairman of the evening, chatting with the Miss Canada Girls and Private P. Markesino, Essex Scottish Regiment, St. Luke Road Barracks.

[greybitch]

Ramsay Bader was a tank driver in the 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery of the British Army. As part of the 147th, Ramsay Bader participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6th 1944. Any mention of Ramsay Bader is incomplete without also mentioning his wife Lilian Bader (née Bailey), a Black British woman, who served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and reached the rank of Acting Corporal. Lilian Bailey and Ramsay Bader married during the war in 1943.

On the eve of D-Day, Lilian remembered: "I didn't know if Ramsay was alive or dead... I remember kneeling in the chapel and praying like blazes that Ramsay would be saved. It was a terrible time because you knew some people were going to be killed, and Ramsay couldn't swim! He hated water. That's what worried me more than anything, but he came through." (Quoted in The Independent)

Ramsay Bader survived and saw the war through to the fall of Nazi Germany. So did Lilian. They would go on to live long lives, Ramsay passing away in 1992 and Lilian quite recently in 2015. Together they are a testament to the experience of the Black British community during WW2 and there are many stories just like theirs lost to history or just waiting to be recovered.

[theworldofwars]

Frank Cyril Pye was born in Essex, England in February, 1896 and later moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Pye enlisted in Winnipeg in December, 1915 and was serving with the Nova Scotia Regiment at the time of his death on August 11, 1918, aged 21. Pictured here with his little sister, Flo. 

[rnsulentic]

WIP. Prussian Hussar regiment No.1, The Green Hussars. Essex 15mm figures, GW contrast paints mostly.