Spring 2017 Newsletter

Spring 2017 Newsletter News from the Front line It takes me all week to get through the Saturday edition of Daily Telegraph so by today (Thursday) I finally got through to the travel supplement. It beats me why you have to have a whole supplement on the purchase of expensive watches but perhaps I am not in the wage bracket of other Telegraph readers. Anyway, having scanned through the travel section, skipping the cruises as I had spent enough time at sea on the ‘Grey Funnel line’, it was nice to see a centre page spread all about Arras, in France, and the forthcoming 100th anniversary of the Battle of Arras and Vimy Ridge. Throughout the night of 8th April the weather had been atrocious with wind, rain and snow falling on the 350,000 troops who were deployed on the Third Army front around Arras and the 30,000 Canadians in trenches in front of Vimy Ridge. Not a good start for the day of battle on the 9th. The fact that this had happened a mere 41 years before the day I was born puts it all into perspective for me. One can only imagine what thoughts were going through the minds of the troops and what they had to endure in such conditions as well as fighting uphill to the ridge at Vimy in the case of the Canadian Divisions. On this year’s 100th anniversary of the Battle it is only right that the Canadians take ‘centre stage’ for their participation and victory at Vimy Ridge on which stands their memorial to the missing. Let it not be forgotten though, that many of those who fought and died in those Canadian Battalions came from Great Britain, and other countries, having emigrated to Canada before the war and signing up to do their bit. Men like my relation Walter William Rogers, from Andover in Hampshire, whose name I have often touched when visiting the named walls of Vimy memorial. The Telegraph supplement guides visitors around the area to places such as Wellington Quarry (underground tunnels), the trench network, mines and memorial at Vimy, and even the very large German cemetery at Neuville St. Vaast whose 44,000 war dead are included within our website. The article mentions that pupils from a Bridgenorth school had recently visited and laid a poppy cross with the lines from a Wilfred Owen poem altered to suit the visit in these times of reconciliation “You are the enemy I killed, my friend’. I am not personally aware of anyone attending the th ceremony at Vimy on the 9 April but like the one at Thiepval in July last year, security will be very tight and roads around the memorial closed for a couple of days beforehand. Well worth a visit if you have not been beforehand. For those unable to visit, we do have all the names on the memorial within our archive. Recognition from down under In the last newsletter I mentioned about Australian requests appearing to drop off but this has taken a turn in the other direction now. The Government sponsored Australian War Memorial at Canberra https://www.awm.gov.au/ hold a ceremony at the end of each day, commencing at 4.55 pm when the Memorial bids farewell to visitors with its moving Last Post Ceremony. The ceremony begins with the singing of the Australian National Anthem, followed by the poignant strains of a lament, played by a piper. Visitors are invited to lay wreaths and floral tributes beside the Pool of Reflection. The Roll of Honour in the Cloisters lists the names of more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations over more than a century. At each ceremony the story behind one of these names is told. Families can provide a photograph of the grave, if held, and this is displayed in A3 size at the ceremony. If none held an Australian flag folded on a plinth is displayed. The AWM appreciate that to have a headstone to display is more poignant and have approached TWGPP to supply these images for each casualty they commemorate at this event. It has been recognised that we supply high quality images that have been modified via photographic software for best presentation and not just a low resolution, poor quality image that can be downloaded from other sites. I think you should all be proud that our images are being utilized in such a manner. Whilst on the subject of Australia, the Victorian Association of Jewish Ex & Servicemen and Women of Australia have also recently used our services to obtain images for their ongoing research into Victoria State Jewish casualties. The meaning of Heroism ? I shall be going to the ‘Flicks’ in July to see the new ‘Dunkirk’ film. This will most probably be a family affair as we will be remembering my grandfather Frederick Barter who played his part in the evacuation of allied forces from the beachhead there. In recent times there has, in my opinion, been a complete watering down of the term ‘Hero’. Nowadays, it is often used to describe someone that has kicked an inflated pigs bladder between two posts and got paid many thousands of pounds to do it. Or it may be a ‘heroic’ attempt to get a batter to rise when baking a cake! As I said, the term nowadays has little meaning when used on a number of occasions. I am pleased to say that my grandfather Fred can be termed as ‘Heroic’ in the true sense. As a volunteer on board ‘Ankh’, an inshore patrol craft, (as a civilian) he, along with the small crew found themselves off the sand dunes at Bray, near Dunkirk, on the morning of 31st May 1940. He would have been looking at the troops lining the shore who were trying to get off and embarked onto the ships that could not get inshore. It was here that Captain Howson RN transferred from a shore party to the motor boat ‘Ankh’ which he used as his HQ for the rest of the day. Of the nine yachts that went from Portsmouth, he ordered four to the beach at La Panne whilst the remainder were to remain at Bray to assist in the evacuation. Because of the deep draft of the yachts and their inability to get closer inshore, the yachts motor boats were launched so that the troops could be ferried from the beachhead to the waiting craft. Fred Barter and Frank Lunn took charge of one of these boats and ferried men, 20 at a time instead of the normal 8, to the yachts and other craft lying off shore. During one of the return journeys to the yachts, with a full load of men, his launch was sunk by a near miss bomb leaving the soldiers in full kit floundering in the water. Fred and Frank then swam back to the ‘Ankh’ under heavy fire to free another boat and to proceed to rescue the men in the water and continue to transfer other members of the B.E.F. to the yachts. In total, Fred and his crewmate Frank were able to save more than 400 men that day. For this action of putting their own lives at risk to save others, Fred and Frank were awarded the Distinguished Service Medal ‘For Services in the Withdrawal of the Allied Armies from the beaches at Dunkirk’ from King George on 16th July 1940 at Buckingham Palace. Fred (2nd Right) and Frank (far right) with the crew of the Motor Yacht ‘Ankh’ I never knew any of this until I started researching my family history after Fred had died. Fred had never mentioned it to me when I was younger nor did any of the family who probably did not know much about it either. It was not until I was talking to one of his surviving friends did I get the story to piece together from newspaper cuttings of the time. The family of Frank Lunn, who accompanied Fred in the launch, said that he returned from Dunkirk with white hair having been dark beforehand! The friend I spoke to had to laugh when he told me that Field Marshall Viscount Gort, VC, The Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force on the beach had tried to jump the queue to Fred’s launch so Fred told him to “**** off” and get to the back. Ok, I do not know how true that was and I cannot find anything in the official histories of the time but as we used to say when I was serving in the RN “why spoil a good dit with the truth!” There was no PTSD in those days and those affected by any memories of that period in time just had to bear a stiff upper lip and get on with it. Fred died in the 70’s of liver failure brought on by alcoholism. Why do I add this to the Newsletter? Well, many of my daughter’s generation know nothing about Dunkirk but a ‘star’ of this new film is a young chap by the name of Harry Styles. Worth about £55 Million now, according to the Sunday papers, as part of the boy band ‘One Direction’ (or ‘1D’ for those in the know). At first I was dismayed to hear that this was going to be his film debut but if it brings thousands of young girls accompanied by their boyfriends to see a film about true heroes then it has got to be a good thing.

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