“On the night of 18th May 1918, members of the St Omer Convoy were called out to evacuate patients after a bombing raid had hit a local ammunition dump.”
“First Military Medals awarded to the FANY” – FANY website [accessed 18 May 2020]
The FANY as they are almost always know were the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a group of predominantly women with the possibly fanciful idea of combining their horsewomanship and first aid ability to be of service to the British military. They envisaged they could gallop out on to the battlefield to retrieve the wounded and carry them back to the lines where First Aid could be applied. In reality this romantic idea evolved rapidly in World War One into driving heavy motor ambulances – initially for the French and Belgians because the British wanted nothing to do with them.
(more…)My late mother, then Elizabeth Willett, was almost 14 in June 1944. In her memoirs she wrote of her memories of D-Day. She was away at boarding school in Sherborne, Dorset.
(more…)During the night of the 5th – 6th of June 1944, everyone in my house was woken by the staff and prefects to watch the gliders being towed over to Normandy at the start of D-Day.
One hundred years on it is hard to imagine the impact of the Armistice. I was too young to discuss it with any of my relatives who survived the war. I imagine amidst the celebrations there would have been a sad reckoning.
(more…)
On this day 100 years ago (26th April 1918) my Grandfather, Harold Faulder, climbed out of a trench near Ypres leading his company across no man’s land towards the German lines. He did not return and his body was never recovered.
A previous post had detailed his career. Today I am looking at what we know about the night of 25th/26th April and the early morning of 26th April 1918. (more…)
Elsewhere I have written about Wilfred Willett and how his wife rescued him when he was left for near-dead in a Base Hospital in Boulogne. He had been injured on 13 December 1914 when crawling out into no-mans land to assist one of his men who had been shot.
I now read of an incident involving his brother Lewis Willett. It caught my eye because my mother was adopted by a Willett and was consequently a cousin once removed of Wilfred and Lewis. (more…)
Hansard, The Record of the UK Parliament, reports for 17 May 1916:
HC Deb 17 May 1916 vol 82 cc1572-6181572
§ Message received to attend the Lords Commissioners.
§ The House went, and, having returned,
reported the Royal Assent to,
1. Local Government (Emergency Provisions) Act, 1916.
2. Courts (Emergency Powers) (Amendment) Act, 1916.
3. Summer Time Act, 1916.
4. Edinburgh Corporation Order Confirmation Act, 1916.
5. Gas Orders Confirmation Act, 1916.
6. Burnley Corporation Act, 1916.
7. Weston-Super-Mare Grand Pier Act, 1916.
Hansard, HC Deb 17 May 1916 vol 82 cc1572-618
The Summer Time Act had long been advocated by William Willett. He did not live to see his proposal implemented having died in March 1915. The idea had been adopted by many other countries including Germany and it was only the demands of wartime that moved the British from ridiculing the idea to adopting it. (more…)
Taking stock of questions to research, itches to scratch, and development work to do.
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