Strange Occurrences on the Western Front

[hazelclark]

Some of these stories are mentioned elsewhere in this thread Ian, so they must be fairly weel known.

H.C.

[Will O'Brien]

Stangest occurance I've seen on the Western Front is Andy (Armourersergeant), Steve (Stebie9173) & Nigel (The English Dog) buying a round.

[Ianto]

This one too is interesting:

http://goo.gl/LaI18

I really do wonder what the actual truth is.

[hazelclark]

This one too is interesting:

http://goo.gl/LaI18

I really do wonder what the actual truth is.

I wonder if this is documented elsewhere?

H.C.

[Nick Thornicroft]

Recently returned from a solo Somme visit. Nothing peculiar at Mametz Wood & the Dragon Memorial - as has been suggested before, all copses & groups of trees can appear a little menacing if you are there on your own. Anyway, in the evening I went to the Lochnagar Crater, & was the only one there. The sun was setting, & as I walked round to the far side, almost immediately opposite the Cross, my shadow was reflected onto the trees around the edge. Just for a couple of seconds there seemed to be two shadows - mine, & one behind. I put it down to the refracting sunlight as I was moving, as obviously the trunks of the trees are at different distances as a person walks by, thus casting a 'jumping' shadow as you continue round. However, it made me stop & look behind me. I walked round again as the light was fading, but nothing the second time. I also stood amongst the trees on the edge of the crater, looking across at the direction in which the British advanced (towards me) on 1st July 1916, & felt a little uneasy. Your mind does play tricks on you, it's true. The merest movement (there were a number of rabbits in the field) draws your eye to one place, & then you think you see something else in another direction. I decided to call it a night.

[Khaki]

I find these reports very interesting reading, naturally enough they are member's experiences while visiting F&F, but what of the locals?, the people who live on or near these sites,

are they sceptical? or do they have their own interesting stories? Have any members had anecdotal information from the residents?

khaki

[hazelclark]

I find these reports very interesting reading, naturally enough they are member's experiences while visiting F&F, but what of the locals?, the people who live on or near these sites,

are they sceptical? or do they have their own interesting stories? Have any members had anecdotal information from the residents?

khaki

Now that would be interesting!

H.C.

[Guest exuser1]

Back in the 1980s i met the old boy who owned Croenart Wood spent the night with him drinking and he let us camp in the woods over night ,he said would we mind sleeping amongst the dead , he told us when as a young lad he found a skull in the undergrowth he picked it up and out from the eye socket a mouse jumped which scared the life out of him ! we asked him then if any other time he had seen or witnessed anything odd at the site and his house was along side the wood his awnser was a firm no!

[hazelclark]

Back in the 1980s i met the old boy who owned Croenart Wood spent the night with him drinking and he let us camp in the woods over night ,he said would we mind sleeping amongst the dead , he told us when as a young lad he found a skull in the undergrowth he picked it up and out from the eye socket a mouse jumped which scared the life out of him ! we asked him then if any other time he had seen or witnessed anything odd at the site and his house was along side the wood his awnser was a firm no!

Might reduce the value of the real estate!

H.

[mctaz]

Being into genealogy, for many years I've encountered many strange "coincidences" that are inexplicable.

Last trip I had to F&F I visited Cite Bonjean Military Cemetery at Armentieres with the intent of photographing all the graves of 40th Bn AIF soldiers buried there. I'd done my homework, I had a printed list of the soldiers and their plots so my partner & I worked through them, ticking them off as we took the photos. However, one soldier had eluded us, so I went back to the Register and called out the plot number to her. While she took the photo I had a quick squizz at the Visitors Book.

I was amused to discover the last entry in the book was from 2 people from NSW who'd come to visit the same soldier Sgt FG Tuck three days earlier, having previously visited it 25 years or so earlier! coincidence? (there are over 2,500 graves in Cite Bonjean)

[Bellflower]

Started reading this thread yesterday and have an open mind on such things. However I believe some people do have, for want of a better phrase, a sixth sense which has become dulled for most of us over the centuries. I have certainly felt on edge in some places on the Somme, but attribute this to being on my own in the middle of nowhere, or somewhere I shouldn't really be ( own up , we've all done it )

There is recurring mention of Mametz and Flat Iron Copse in this thread which I am going to add to...........

In November 2011, I was on my first trip with Linesman and was looking forward to using it, all checked out before I left home and worked fine when I switched it on in the Holiday Inn in Arras. Next day it was off to Mametz Wood and the Welsh Memorial. I wandered around with Linesman and it was brilliant, so I drove on down the lane to Flat Iron Copse in the Mitsi and stopped at the Cemetery for some lunch before exploring further. All ready to go and switched on my notebook, fired up Linesman which showed my current position as being a few miles offshore from Le Havre. First thought, blame the technology, so I switched it off and put the notebook on the Cemetery wall while I went to look at my Google Earth pics for the area. Decided to give it another go and this time spot on. That evening back in Arras I posted my experience in the Using The Technology section in a thread entitled Never rains but............ which is there now for you to see.

It wasn't until I started reading this thread that I considered the link between Welsh units disembarking at le Havre and then being in action around Mametz

[hazelclark]

It seems to me I remember another post from someone who had "technical glitches" in the area.

Hazel

[Khaki]

According to some reports items removed from an area where spiritual energies exist may take those energies with them. Maybe so, but then I would expect battlefield museums to be reporting strange occurrences. I have never heard of any.

khaki

[D. Sims]

Several Years ago I was invited to a chateau on the Aisne where in September 1914 it had been used as an hospital and soldiers who died there had been buried in the grounds at the rear of the chateau. After the war the men had been exhumed and buried in Vendress Cemetery. I had expresses an interest to the owner and he informed me that his father who was a keen photographer and he had taken a photograph of the burial ground in May 1915. He showed me the photograph which showed his father who was a French General in uniform standing in front of graves as if looking at the wooden crosses which were in front of some trees. Through the trees you could faintly see parts of the chateau. He said he would allow me to copy the photograph using my scanner on to my laptop. I had done this hundreds of times in the past easily and with no problems before, however my laptop stopped halfway through the procedure and I had to restart it up again and retry. It did the same thing again. On the third attempt it copied it OK. I shut down my computer and packed my gear away and after thanking my hosts I returned to my hotel. The next morning after breakfast I switched on the computer to look at the photograph. It was the same as the photograph I had copied except that 50 or 60 English and French soldiers were standing behind the crosses and grave earth mounds looking directly at the camera. A French officer was glaring and I mean glaring menacing at the camera. I called my wife to look at the photograph and she could also see the soldiers standing looking at the camera. We were both amazed. Some of the English soldiers had woollen comforters on instead of caps and some the French soldiers were dressed in their overcoats and scarfs as if it was cold. A couple of days later when we returned home. I printed a copy off my computer but the photograph now showed the original photograph with no soldiers, just crosses and mounds of earth. I wrote a letter thanking my hosts and added the following extract in my letter to them. They never replied and even though I sent them a couple of cap badges they had asked for I never heard from them again.

The Photographs you allowed me to copy are excellent. I shall forward the copies to the Regimental Museum. They will also go into the Regimental archives. The day after my visit to you a rather strange thing occurred to my computer. In my hotel room I looked at the picture of the English cemetery in the Chateau grounds and there appeared to be men behind the crosses. In the trees behind the crosses there was a French officer and to his right an English officer. There were several other faces in the trees as well. They were all looking directly towards the photographer. My wife saw them as well. It was uncanny. At first I thought that it was the sunlight shining onto the screen so I turned the screen away from the window. The men remained in the picture. When I magnified the picture the faces were not so clear, but they could still be seen. I switched the computer off and thought that I could print the photograph on my return to England. When I switched it on again in my home the picture was normal. It was an exact copy of your photograph. I cannot explain it. What I saw I cannot believe. Perhaps it occurred because it was because it was copied so close to the cemetery. The French officer was most intense. He was a tall thin man with sharp features and a very imposing bearing. He was a very commanding figure. He looked straight past the real French Officer inspecting the crosses. The expressions on the faces seemed to be curiously interested as they looked at the camera or me! It was not frightening, it just puzzles me.

[Khaki]

Great experience, reminds me of another post, with a child seeing soldiers amongst the tree's, and another in graveyard.

Interesting read,

khaki

[hazelclark]

As I mentioned above, computers are not immune from weird stuff around that neck of the woods!

It is interesting that for all the vast numbers of people who visit the battle fields, very few people have strange experiences or at least report them.

Hazel

[Khaki]

As I mentioned above, computers are not immune from weird stuff around that neck of the woods!

It is interesting that for all the vast numbers of people who visit the battle fields, very few people have strange experiences or at least report them.

Hazel

Or possibly those that say 'I have never seen a ghost' are either not receptive or fail to recognise what they have seen, as everyone expects to see a transparent or floating mist in form, not a solid three dimensional experience as I have seen.

khaki

[Anneca]

WW1 Ghosts Haunt Again

From the Ottawa Citizen this week - Author recounts tales of trenches:

One of Canada’s top military historians has published the first serious study of the First World War’s eeriest phenomena: front-line soldiers’ accounts of ghosts and other “supernatural experiences” amid the bloody battles of Europe almost a century ago.

Author Tim Cook, the Canadian War Museum’s leading expert on the 1914-18 conflict, has unearthed a host of poignant and spine-tingling stories involving bizarre apparitions, life-saving premonitions and other unexplained happenings. Writing in the Journal of Military History, Cook describes how the knife-edge existence of Canada’s troops in battles such as Passchendaele and Vimy Ridge led some men to believe they’d seen dead comrades resurrected and wandering the scarred landscapes of the Western Front.

“As a threshold borderland, the Western Front was a place for such spectral thinking and haunting, where the strange was made ordinary, where the safe was infused with danger, where death was natural and life fleeting” writes Cook.

He describes how the living and the dead were gruesomely mingled in the muddy trenches of France and Belgium, where fighting men “became martyred corpses in the blink of an eye.” “Grimy, exhausted soldiers, covered in mud, asleep on a fire step or in a funk hole could easily be mistaken for the dead”, Cook observes. “It was not lost on the soldiers that they seemed to be digging extended graves – the trenches – to protect themselves from death-dealing artillery shells. And, in sick irony, the artillery bombardments often buried the living and disgorged the dead.”

One well-known story from the war is highlighted in Cook’s study: Cpl. Will Bird’s moving description of the night his brother’s “ghost” saved him from certain death. Bird, who had a postwar career as a Nova Scotia Journalist, had written about a night after the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge when he was suddenly stirred from deep slumber under a tarp he’d been sharing with two fellow soldiers near the front line.

“Before dawn, warm hands shook him” Cook recounts, “Wiping away sleep, he looked with amazement at his brother Steve,” who had been reported missing in action in 1915. “Steve led him through some ruins when he suddenly rounded a corner and disappeared”. Cpl. Bird, settled for sleep in the new location, dismissed his brother’s ghostly appearance as a “hallucination.” But in the morning he was stunned to learn that the two other soldiers under the tarp had suffered a “direct hit from a high explosive shell” and were “dismembered beyond all recognition.”

Anne

[Guest exuser1]

As I mentioned above, computers are not immune from weird stuff around that neck of the woods!

It is interesting that for all the vast numbers of people who visit the battle fields, very few people have strange experiences or at least report them.

Hazel

And not only computers ,a mate of mine led a group for the 200th anniversary of the storming of Badajoz in 1812 , they were on site at the breach in the walls at the same time as the boys went in 200 years earlier ,at this point all the digital cameras stopped working ,and then just playing up ,some of the shots did come out with shadowed effects across the whole scene .

[hazelclark]

And not only computers ,a mate of mine led a group for the 200th anniversary of the storming of Badajoz in 1812 , they were on site at the breach in the walls at the same time as the boys went in 200 years earlier ,at this point all the digital cameras stopped working ,and then just playing up ,some of the shots did come out with shadowed effects across the whole scene .

Me thinks conspiracy theory coming up! H

[Guest exuser1]

Me thinks conspiracy theory coming up! H

Me thinks that after a good celebratory then at midnight off to the breach may have helped also ,but have seen a couple of the photographs and spooky !

[high wood]

I have had one of those strange other worldly experiences whilst looking through soldiers' service papers on Ancestry.

I have often seen the slightly whacky news stories about the man who miraculously finds the face of Jesus on a slice of burnt toast or the chap who finds the name of Allah in arabic when slicing an aubergine. I have always discounted them as the product of an over zealous mindset. But now it has happened to me and you can check this for yourselves.

Whilst looking for the papers of William C Atkins who served in the Royal Sussex Regiment I found the papers of Pte Ernest William Atkins, SD/274 who served with the 11th (Southdown) battalion. Sadly, he was killed in action on the 3rd September 1916.

The service papers do not record Ernest Atkins's political persuasion but he may have been a man of socialist principles. The strange thing is that the head of Lenin appears at the top left of the first page of the service papers. Did this carry some kind of portent? Was it a sign that the Czarist armies were about to crumble, the old order would be swept away and that the Kaiser would soon be able to move his armies from the Eastern front?

Well no actually; it's a stain that coincidently looks like Lenin. I know this because I am a medium; at least that is what a label in my boxer shorts says.

[Anneca]

Well, that IS scary. I do hope you feel OK and your medium sized boxers weren't made in Czarist Russia! I'm Lenin towards the opinion that the ink is of a supernatural nature but then that might be an abCzardly statement to make. However, glad to know Pte. Atkins' number was not 666.

Anne

[edwin astill]

It's a bloke wearing a stocking mask, with the foot of the stocking sticking out from the back of his head.

[high wood]

Woe unto the unbelievers.