Somewhere in Flanders

[Malcolm Harvey]

I thought the forum might be interested in a recent new publication entitled “SOMEWHERE IN FLANDERS”; Letters of a Norfolk Padre in the Great War. It is published by Larks Press, Guist Bottom, Norfolk www.booksatlarkspress.co.uk; ISBN 1-904006-25-6

It reviews the life of the Revd. Samuel Frederick Leighton Green MC (twice) and publishes his monthly letters from the front to his home parishioners. Specific details in his original letters were obviously restrained by censorship but subsequent research and footnotes add more detail. The book was reviewed in the Eastern Evening News of 3/6/05 and hopefully the following link will take you there http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/search/stor...Category=search. If I've cocked up the link go to their archive for 3/6/05.

Curiously, my parents were married in 1922 at Sam Green’s home church, St Barnabas but not by the man himself. My father served in WW1 and I wonder if the two met over there and this was the culmination of some prior agreement, for neither of my parents came from the parish. Too late to find out now.

Mac Harvey

[Guest Stuart McLaren]

I am the editor of "Somewhere in Flanders". The Revd Samuel Frederick Leighton Green MC left St Barnabas, Heigham, Norwich, in 1921, where he had been assistant priest or curate since 1912, when he became Rector of All Saints Church, Mundesley, on the Norfolk coast. So he would not have been around to officiate at your parent's wedding there in 1922. He died in 1929 aged only 47, of complications brought on by appendicitis. He had been gassed and shelled in the war and his health was never good afterwards. There is now a plaque commemorating the Revd Green in St Barnabas', next to the war memorial, which he helped pay for. It contains the largest number of casualties of any parish church in Norwich.