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Remembered Today:

Published Literature on Monuments


seaforths

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I just made the following purchase today:

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I thought I would like to get it because one of granddad's cousins was killed 13 November 1916 at Beaumont Hamel.

Awhile ago, I read a book and it reached a particular part of the text to say a monument had been raised to the 15th Scottish Division and it made reference to a French publication that had information and photographs. I found near the rear of the book, the relevant pages from the French publication on the monument, had been tucked inside. It is interesting because it shows the before and why that particular location was selected, the under-construction period and obviously, the end result etc. I won't know what the 51st Div. book will contain until it arrives. Hopefully it will be just as informative as the literature on the 15th Div.

I'm now quite curious as to how much literature from that era survives on these monuments.

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Hi namesake,

Was this one of the Seaforth cousins?

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Hi namesake,

Was this one of the Seaforth cousins?

Ooooh hello stranger! Yes, it was William. He came back from Canada to enlist in the 6th Seaforth.

I just thought there are so many monuments, some quite plain and others more elaborate; there might be some surviving literature about them. It must have been quite a frenzied period of time (the first few years after the war). What with reconstructing towns and cities, recovering and burying the dead, exhumations and concentrations and yet, they took the time to erect these monuments too.

BTW did you see my post for you on the 'Swords and Sabres' thread? An extract on a Sgt of the 78th and his broadsword.

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I noticed last night while looking to see if any literature had survived on other monuments, that a similar sized book to the 51st HD survives for the Ulster Tower but very expensive in comparison.

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  • 1 month later...

Well, I have to say the little book (not little in size as the pages are quite big but only 50 pages or so) was very informative. Quite a lot of photographs and lists of names of those officers and some of the relatives, guard of honour and dignitaries that attended the unveiling ceremony - there were a couple of surprises for me in there.

I wanted to wait until I had finished the book I was on before reading it and that worked out quite strangely really. The book I had been reading was 6th Gordon's book. It said that the ancient tunnels and caves that were said to be underneath Beaumont Hamel were nothing but a myth propagated by the press and that all the caves and tunnels found in the attack of November 1916 were completely man made by the Germans.

Reading the book about the monument after the previous book, it said that the original site for the monument had to be abandoned because when they dug down to sink the foundations, they hit the ancient caves and tunnels that had eluded the British and the Germans during the war. It would appear then, that the French didn't know the location of them either until they began the monument.

Although I bought it because William died there - it turned out to be quite a little treasure trove of information. I would be interested to know if anyone has made any similar forays into other books of this kind. I don't have any intention of buying any others but I'm glad I got this one.

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