ROYAL AIR FORCE REGIMENT ASSOCIATION www.rafregt.org.uk BIRMINGHAM BRANCH IMPORTANT NOTICE My Retirement as Your Branch Secretary Page 2 NO ONE HAS YET COME No One has Yet Come Forward Page 2 – Branch Appeal Goodies for Our Injured Boys Page 2 FORWAR D Page 2 – Help For Heroes a Calendar Page 2 – GOODIE S FOR OUR Centurion Journal Moving to an Annual Edition Page 2 Branch Birthdays Page 2 INJURED BOYS Page 2 Spring Reunion Bodelwyddan Castle Hotel, North Wales Page 2 RAF REGIMENT NEWS Belton Park Page 3 Two Reports from Hughie Cooper Page 3 Page 4 Our Visit to Belton Park Page 3 Smith Gun & Northover Projector Page 4 NATIONAL MEMORIAL Our Visit to the NMA Page 4 ARBORETUM UPDATE National Memorial Arboretum Update Page 5 Page 7 RAF Regiment Memorial Garden Page 5 Future Events at the NMA Page 5 FROM THE RAF REG.T RAF Regiment Books Page 6 SECRETARY Page 11 Books about the RAF Regiment Page 6 Books Containing References to RAF Regiment Page 7 From the RAF Regiment Secretary Page 7 ONLY FIVE MORE Death Notices Page 7 New Notices Page 7 MONTHS TO GO Corps Diary Dates Page 9 Dates for Your Diary Page 10 Birmingham Branch Committee Page 10 YOU WILL HAVE NOTICED THE GRADUALLY DIMINISHING SIZE OF MY NEWSLETTERS FOR I AM WINDING DOWN MY WORK AS YOUR BRANCH SECRETARY – I AM COUNTING DOWN FIVE MONTHS UNTIL I RETIRE AS YOUR BRANCH SECRETARY. A NEW SECRETARY IS REQUIRED IF THE BRANCH IS TO CONTINUE. The Best Fighters in the RAF PLEASE GIVE IT SOME THOUGHT Operate on the Ground The Royal Air Force Regiment. Ground-based specialists, NEWSLETTER NO: 255 protecting RAF assets from enemy attack. SEPTEMBER 2010 2 THE BIRMINGHAM BRANCH NEWSLETTER NUMBER 255 SEPTEMBER 2010 Dear Readers. CENTURION JOURNAL My Retirement as Your Secretary In recognition of the workload involved in No one has yet come forward to volunteer producing the semi-annual Centurion Journal to stand as the Branch Secretary at the Branch against the pressures on peoples time, the AGM next February. Please would you all give it Commandant General has directed that the some thought for after three attempts to retire as Journal will move to an annual edition from 2011. your Secretary, this time I will be - so if the As such the Spring Edition will not be produced. Branch is to continue to function efficiently, The copy for 2011 will be produced in the someone needs to volunteer their services. autumn and will cover the Corps life. Further Goodies for our Injured Boys details as to submission will be published in due It is most important that we remember the course. However, contributors will need to factor dangers that our young men and women serving this into their programme, not least to capture the on operations are all facing, so please remember necessary detail in preparation for their the appeal your Branch Committee have set up. submissions. It is intended that the size and With your help, we can continue to number of colour pages will be increased to “Year Book” approach. provide these small comforts and any other items reflect the that members of the military staff ask us for. We BRANCH BIRTHDAYS can never get enough goodies for the lads, so in A very Happy Birthday to the following the mean time, your continued support is Birmingham Branch members whose birthdays appreciated for we need much more money. are this month, may you all have many more. It is very much appreciated for it is a huge 3rd Sept Bernard Wynn Birmingham West Mids boost to the lads who are treated at Selly Oak to 7th September Clive Cumber Woking Surrey know that the general public offer the wounded 9th September Spencer Wilcox Tipton West Mids lads and lassies such wonderful financial and 15th Sept Roy Thomas Sutton Coldfield W Mids moral support. It is difficult to work out just how 17th Sept Derek Trust BEM Torquay Devon much money we have raised so far, for as a result 23rd Sept James Patterson Wolverhampton WM of our Appeal, many of you send money directly to the lads but from what I have been told we are SPRING REUNION WEEKEND £5,000 well on our way to . It may be more, so The Spring Reunion Weekend will be held well done lads. at the Bodelwyddan Castle Hotel, North Wales from Friday 8th to Monday 11th April 2010. Prices If any of you would like to contribute £209.00 per person in comfortable en items or cash directly for this appeal, you must are from - contact Major Ian Cheesman, Officer I/C Patient suite rooms. Support Services, or post them to him at RCDM, Selly Oak Hospital, Raddlebarn Road, Selly Oak, Birmingham, B29 6JD. If cash, please make your cheques out to RCDM - PSS. HELP FOR HEROES Chris Yelverton has done a sterling job in £5.00 producing a 2011 calendar costing plus “Calendar Girls” P&P based on the well-known and just like them, all the photographs are on “ladies of a certain age”. I understand that they feature ladies discreetly attired in items of military equipment. If anyone would like one of these calendars please let me know. The Bodelwyddan Castle Hotel 3 Belton Park, Lincolnshire and on the following You will all by now have with your latest day visited the NMA. “The Flash”, received copy of a booking form At the beginning of World War I, like and with its superb location and military many other British landowners, the 3rd Earl connections it is sure to be a great hit so get your Brownlow offered his house and park to the bookings in early. This majestic Grade II castle Government for war service. The offer was ôt and with spectacular views of the North Wales accepted, and in 1915, the home dep coastline is home to the National Portrait training ground of the Machine Gun Corps were ’s Victorian Collection. It is Gallery set amid established in the southern part of Belton Park. beautiful woodlands and sensory gardens, less The lie of the land there, where the River than an hour from the Snowdonia National Park. Witham passes between the Lower Lincolnshire With its magnificent views stretching to Limestone and the Upper Lias mudstone, lent the Clwydian Hills and its feast of live itself to the development of the necessary firing entertainment on offer, this is a hotel where you ranges close to good communications by way of can really spoil yourself. Outside, the beautifully- the Great North Road and the East Coast main tended grounds include a maze, an aviary and a line railway station at Grantham. ôt was closed in 1919, the site tranquil woodland walk. The dep The scenery could best be described as cleared and the land restored to Lord Brownlow in magnificent and dramatic. It is just under an hour 1920. Little sign of the Machine Gun Corps's stay from Chester, 10 minutes from the seaside town remains in the park, but plaques and inscriptions of Rhyl, and half an hour away from the Victorian can be followed from the south gate of Belton Pier at Llandudno. As well as being a historic park to the memorial gate on the way from there house and museum with a free audio tour to the town centre and in the north aisle of available, the Castle also boasts large areas of Grantham parish church. formal garden and natural woodland. Belton Park again saw war service during A particular feature is the area of practice World War II. On the formation of the RAF trenches dating from the First World War. In Regiment in 1942 the park became the first home 1914, the house that a century earlier had been of the Regiment, when soon afterwards it moved designed to look like a castle was requisitioned by to Belton where it was housed in nissen huts in the army for nearby Kinmel Barracks. the park. In January 1984 as a result of death Within the grounds, there is a reminder of duties, coupled with the rising costs of the the Great War years. Training was an important upkeep, made Belton too much for the Brownlow activity during the First World War (1914-1918). family and ownership of the house, garden and It helped to prepare newly recruited soldiers many some of the contents was transferred to the of whom had never considered the intricacies of National Trust. 'modern' warfare. The local training camp for the OUR VISIT TO BELTON PARK area was Kinmel Park Camp, which is located not 14th August 2010 too far from the Castle. The camp has operated By Hughie Cooper for many years but is remembered by many as the When I first heard about this event we camp where the infamous riots took place after the decided to go and at the same time, as they lived First World War. in the same area, meet two of my brothers. When The training trenches are located in the we were discussing the visit, one of them said that Bodelwyddan Castle Parkland. A set of they could do with some rain in Lincolnshire as in interpretive panels will be available shortly that July; they had only had 5 mm of rain whereas in will provide information on what it was like to be other areas they had 134 mm. a soldier living, fighting and dying in the trenches I told them their worries were over as the and illustrations of how the trenches were RAF Regiment would solve their problem, for in constructed.