© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Militaria

Read more about the article Passchendaele: a name written in blood

Passchendaele: a name written in blood

If getting killed by the thousands is glorious, it was glorious in the Ypres battle. My battalion came out 200 strong out of a thousand. It breaks my heart when I think of it.Private Bob Gibson, Knorrit Flat By 1917, as fighting wore on in Europe, the British high command was practically in disrepute among sizeable portions of the Allied armies. Commander in Chief Douglas Haig didn’t go anywhere near the Ypres battlefields in late 1917 and criticised the troops for not being able to make and hold territorial gains. Men saw that they were repeatedly…

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Read more about the article Uncle Jack Allsopp’s walk-on part at the Battle of Passchendaele.
At the grave of Jack Allsopp in France, 2015.

Uncle Jack Allsopp’s walk-on part at the Battle of Passchendaele.

Passchendaele was a word I grew up with because that was where my grandmother's favourite brother died. My grandmother's been gone from this world herself now for more than 50 years, but I can see her plainly in my mind's eye, sitting in her rocking chair in her little fibro housing commission cottage at Glendale, Newcastle, NSW. She didn't talk much to adults about Uncle Jack; maybe because she got more than a bit misty when she thought about him. But she told me, when I was a child at her knee, and she let me…

Continue ReadingUncle Jack Allsopp’s walk-on part at the Battle of Passchendaele.
Read more about the article Plane wreck a monument to a war hero and an ill-starred venture

Plane wreck a monument to a war hero and an ill-starred venture

Stand by your glasses steady, for each man who takes off and flies. Here’s to the dead already; three cheers for the next man who dies. Toast proposed by British World War 2 aircrew following the death of a comrade. Doug Swain DFC at Camden in about 1948. Photo by John Laming. In the foothills of the Barrington Tops, in NSW, pieces of a wrecked Lockheed Hudson aircraft are a lonely monument to the three men who died in the 1954 crash, including World War 2 bomber pilot Doug Swain DFC. The wreckage is also a…

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