Has Anyone Got A Photograph Of..........

[Fattyowls]

1 minute ago, sassenach said:

Nice one Pete. One of the most poignant views in the salient imho.

 

Thanks Mr S. It was a day when scuddy showers kept scudding across the landscape; there was a brief moment when the spires were illuminated by watery sunshine while I got drenched by watery rainfall. I found a German trench panorama taken from just to the north relatively early in the war, roughly from where the museum now is, and it looks almost identical. It is an interesting point however about poignant views; the more you learn the more views become poignant. It's why these ones from JW are so interesting, they aren't ones we've probably ever looked at.

 

Pete.

[sassenach]

2 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

Thanks Mr S. It was a day when scuddy showers kept scudding across the landscape; there was a brief moment when the spires were illuminated by watery sunshine while I got drenched by watery rainfall. I found a German trench panorama taken from just to the north relatively early in the war, roughly from where the museum now is, and it looks almost identical. It is an interesting point however about poignant views; the more you learn the more views become poignant. It's why these ones from JW are so interesting, they aren't ones we've probably ever looked at.

 

Pete.

Very true. Just across the fields from the Canadian Memorial is the area where my uncle was killed on the opening day of Third Ypres, so it has a particular resonance for me.

Let's hope we can get back there before too long. 

[Fattyowls]

3 minutes ago, sassenach said:

Let's hope we can get back there before too long.

 

Definitely; we could probably fill a few charabancs just from forum chums. We can meet up by the now famous tree by the Menin Gate.......

 

Pete.

[neverforget]

Just spent a while catching up with the recent photos on this, one of my favourite GWF threads. Wonderful contributions; many thanks for them.👍

[Fattyowls]

1 hour ago, neverforget said:

Wonderful contributions

 

You're not wrong matey. WWW/JW in particular has been an excellent addition to the first team squad during the January transfer window. The question we all need to be asking is how can Roberto Martinez ignore this boy?

 

Hope all is well as can be expected in the greater Brum metro area.

 

Pete.

 

P.S. Aside from this landscape photo identification mularkey why don't we do one for pictures of WW1 people? We could call it Who is this? I wonder why nobody has thought of it?

[neverforget]

10 hours ago, Fattyowls said:

 

You're not wrong matey. WWW/JW in particular has been an excellent addition to the first team squad during the January transfer window. The question we all need to be asking is how can Roberto Martinez ignore this boy?

 

Hope all is well as can be expected in the greater Brum metro area.

 

Pete.

 

P.S. Aside from this landscape photo identification mularkey why don't we do one for pictures of WW1 people? We could call it Who is this? I wonder why nobody has thought of it?

It'd never catch on Pete. 

All well and good here thanks mate, as long as we take St. Andrews' hapless residents' forlorn antics out of the equation. 😣

Edited 6 February , 2021 by neverforget

[Fattyowls]

While I was looking through some of mine for examples with comedy value due to amateurish composition and/or the lack of even a basic understanding of the functioning of my camera I came upon this. I'm sure it will be immediately recognisable but just to give it a bit of a challenge I'd like to know what is behind me across the road and four numbers which are associated with the location from which you can derive a ranking.

 

 

 

 

 

[Michelle Young]

I know where you are and what's behind you, but the numbers thing is a bit beyond my tired brain 

[Fattyowls]

36 minutes ago, Michelle Young said:

I know where you are and what's behind you, but the numbers thing is a bit beyond my tired brain 

 

I'm not at my chipper best either but I suspect that my excuse - staying up to watch the first half of a hugely disappointing Superbowl and then getting up to watch England meander maddeningly in Madras (Chennai doesn't have the same alliterative ring) is much less noble than yours. The numbers are to do with what you are looking at, I learned something new about it when checking the answers.

 

Pete.

[WorldWarWanderer]

On 05/02/2021 at 20:59, Fattyowls said:

Just to go back to the relatively mud free photo of the railway line beyond the trees are you by the line of ponds that cross the path along the line from the Caterpillar?

 

Pete.

That is correct! 

 

 

[WorldWarWanderer]

Today, I'm posting some photos of small and personal memorials I spotted along my walks. Places that are sometimes remarkable and sometimes unremarkable to the general public, but are very special and important to the people marking them with their physical tokens of remembrance. if you take your time and look around all the time while moving through these landscapes you find them everywhere. thousands of stories withering away in wind, rain and time. 

 

50°48'52.0"N 2°56'14.0"E

 

 

50°50'46.0"N 2°58'10.0"E

 

 

50°50'45.0"N 2°58'09.0"E

 

 

50°52'50.0"N 2°59'30.0"E

 

 

50°53'14.0"N 3°00'00.0"E

 

 

50°52'39.0"N 2°59'31.0"E

[horrocks]

On 08/02/2021 at 19:31, Fattyowls said:

While I was looking through some of mine for examples with comedy value due to amateurish composition and/or the lack of even a basic understanding of the functioning of my camera I came upon this. I'm sure it will be immediately recognisable but just to give it a bit of a challenge I'd like to know what is behind me across the road and four numbers which are associated with the location from which you can derive a ranking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the numbers are 3873, and the ranking 3rd. I see a certain famous windmill.

[Fattyowls]

Good stuff Toby. You are within touching distance of what I wanted, 3783 is one of the four, 3114, 914 and 165 are the other three. I didn't know about the 165 despite having been there several times. I'm never quite sure where the famous windmill was to be honest but I'll take your word for it. I was going to say the horizon has two settlements which always seem the wrong way round.....

 

Pete.

 

 

[horrocks]

Ah, OK, total WW1, unidentified, unidentified (truly shocking) and WW2.

 

The little clump of trees stands atop the windmill mound. Your lens has had the effect of drawing it closer.

[sassenach]

Could one of you chaps translate all this for a poor ignoramus like me, please?

[Fattyowls]

Of course Mr S. The location is the London Cemetery and High Wood is behind me across the road from Martinpuich to Longueval (or vice versa). The numbers are taken from the CWGC entry for the cemetery, and I'd not realised that it was a concentration cemetery for WW2 burials, despite having been there several times. The two settlements are Bazentin le Grand and Bazentin le Petit, but le Grand is petit and petit is grand by comparison. If I've followed Toby's observation the clump of trees is where the windmill stood that was Frank Richards' position during the 2nd Royal Welsh attack on High Wood on the 20th July 1916; Robert Graves was pebbledashed in the nearby cemetery that same day. A Mr T. Webster of this parish gives chapter and verse here....

 

I'll add inadvertent foreshortening to the charge sheet of my crimes against quality photography, but it makes the photo a lot more interesting than it was before I posted it. Michelle wins the prize for getting the location a couple of days back.

 

Pete.

[sassenach]

1 minute ago, Fattyowls said:

Of course Mr S. The location is the London Cemetery and High Wood is behind me across the road from Martinpuich to Longueval (or vice versa). The numbers are taken from the CWGC entry for the cemetery, and I'd not realised that it was a concentration cemetery for WW2 burials, despite having been there several times. The two settlements are Bazentin le Grand and Bazentin le Petit, but le Grand is petit and petit is grand by comparison. If I've followed Toby's observation the clump of trees is where the windmill stood that was Frank Richards' position during the 2nd Royal Welsh attack on High Wood on the 20th July 1916; Robert Graves was pebbledashed in the nearby cemetery that same day. A Mr T. Webster of this parish gives chapter and verse here....

 

I'll add inadvertent foreshortening to the charge sheet of my crimes against quality photography, but it makes the photo a lot more interesting than it was before I posted it. Michelle wins the prize for getting the location a couple of days back.

 

Pete.

Ah, got it Pete. Many thanks. 

[Don Regiano]

On 10/02/2021 at 18:01, Fattyowls said:

If I've followed Toby's observation

 

Yes you have Pete - but I think you knew that all along!  Rubble, shrapnel and a few bullets still around the vicinity of the windmill - well, all around that area really, reflecting the ferocity of the fighting there.  One of my favourite places and where SWMBO's great uncle was mortally wounded in September 1916 (our place in France is named after him).

 

Reg

[Fattyowls]

9 hours ago, Don Regiano said:

Yes you have Pete - but I think you knew that all along!

 

You've mixed me up with someone who knows what they are talking about Reg; I seriously didn't realise until Toby mentioned it. The day I took that one we walked down to Longueval, turned before the village by the cross and walked to the Bazentins via Caterpillar Valley. I was very close to the site of the windmill but couldn't identify exactly where. This happens a lot. I must admit that I thought of you and the other members of the Picardie possé when I was looking for a Somme picture to post. 

 

Hope all is well matey (especially after Wednesday and the last throw of the dice at Old Trafford).

 

Pete.

[Don Regiano]

17 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

You've mixed me up with someone who knows what they are talking about Reg; I seriously didn't realise until Toby mentioned it. The day I took that one we walked down to Longueval, turned before the village by the cross and walked to the Bazentins via Caterpillar Valley. I was very close to the site of the windmill but couldn't identify exactly where. This happens a lot. I must admit that I thought of you and the other members of the Picardie possé when I was looking for a Somme picture to post. 

 

Hope all is well matey (especially after Wednesday and the last throw of the dice at Old Trafford).

 

Pete.

OK Pete.

 

Well, if you take the track on the right immediately after Crucifix Corner (before you turn to B-le-P) and walk up until it levels off you will have reached the windmill.  You will see all sorts of building rubble on the left of the track and it's a good view back to High Wood and the cemetery.  You can see why they chose that spot for observation/signalling.  On the way up picked up a few bullets from an otherwise disappointingly barren finely tilled field on the right but a bit more around the windmill area and a couple of spent shells back on the way down.

 

Yes, I am somewhat out of my depth with all these pictures of Belgium - though I did recognise the one you posted which was taken not far from my "incident" with the car.  I have some very obscure ones but so obscure as not to post (actually they're from our back garden!).  Everything OK over there thanks to sterling work by John from Guillemont Halt who is checking on the house in our absence.  I am dreading our return if it will be as long in the future as being suggested.  It took several days to cut the grass last year after an absence of about 3 months so God knows what it will be like this time.  Yes, I know, you used to have a lawn mower like that till you got a new one.  I've bought a new scythe for the job and just hope the tractor starts when I get back.

 

Oh yes, all's well with the world this week - but for how long?  Still, had my jab last Friday and the only side effect is putting up with the abstinence of alcohol.  I know that will not garner any sympathy from you!

 

Stay safe.

 

Reg

[Don Regiano]

OK - slightly obscure.  Clue = 55th (West Lancashire) Division:

 

 

[Fattyowls]

1 hour ago, Don Regiano said:

I know that will not garner any sympathy from you!

 

Sympathy yes, empathy no. I've seen that photo before but I can't for the life of me remember where. A communal cemetery near you perhaps? I tend to associate burials in them with the very beginning of the war (I think my favourite is Vendresse below the Chemin de Dames), and the very end.

 

Pete.

[Don Regiano]

8 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

I've seen that photo before but I can't for the life of me remember where

 

I posted it on here a very long time ago.  I think the thread was about cemeteries with only a few war graves.

 

9 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

A communal cemetery?

 

 

Yes

 

9 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

near you?

 

 

Not really, it's in Belgium.

 

10 minutes ago, Fattyowls said:

 

I tend to associate burials in them with the very beginning of the war.

 

1918 burials.  55th (West Lancashire) Division began to assemble as a unit in January 1916 though some individual units did have previous WW1 experience.

[Knotty]

Hi Reg,

That’s Froidmont Communal Cemetery at Hainaut if I’m not mistaken.

I have a couple of family members that were in the Kings Own, both were lost in the April 18 German offensives at Givenchy, so I have an passing interest in following the 55th Div. and have a couple of books on their history.

[Don Regiano]

1 hour ago, Knotty said:

Hi Reg,

That’s Froidmont Communal Cemetery at Hainaut if I’m not mistaken.

I have a couple of family members that were in the Kings Own, both were lost in the April 18 German offensives at Givenchy, so I have an passing interest in following the 55th Div. and have a couple of books on their history.

 

It is indeed Knotty - congratulations and help yourself to the fig biscuits!  I've just finished reading the Rev Coop's book on the Division which I thought was somewhat jingoistic, perhaps because of when it was written and the intended audience.  The Division was a "local" one for me.  One of my relatives was in the 1/1 WLFA but this was really before the Division's activities on the Western Front and he died in November 1915 and is buried in Egypt.

 

Reg