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Archive | December, 2015

Visiting the Fallen – A trio of cemeteries just beyond Arras

My working draft of “Visiting the Fallen” also had the subtitle: “A Guide to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemeteries in and around Arras”. The question was how far should I stretch that definition? In the end I decided to be guided by the map that appears on the end-paper (front) of “Military Operations – France and […]

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“Same story, different tale” – Arras Memorials and Arras North

It’s not uncommon to come across different accounts of the same event and in “Visiting the Fallen” there are several such instances. Sometimes it’s a case of an event viewed from a different perspective, sometimes different people have only partial information rather than the whole story; occasionally rumour becomes shaped as fact, at other times there is even what we might call selective […]

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“One more burial at HAC Cemetery” – Arras Memorials – Page 73

Friday the 11th September this year was a gloriously sunny day, at least it was in Arras. I happened to be over there for three days leading a group around the 1915 battlefields of northern France, and ahead of joining everyone for breakfast I popped out to grab a copy of the “Voix du Nord”, the regional daily newspaper, and an early morning coffee. On page 15 the […]

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Appendix – Arras Memorials – Page 248

Having just received my copies of ‘Arras Memorials’ from the publisher, I would like to draw attention to the appendix at the end of the book. Although the reference to aircraft identification number 59 (the remaining digits are not fully discernible from the photograph in the book) states that there are three possible candidates, there are in fact just two, […]

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“Rediscovering the Fallen” – Arras North – Page 89

Between the publication of ‘Arras South’ and the final edit of ‘Arras Memorials’ I had a little time to re-read an old favourite of mine: “War Letters to a Wife” by Lieutenant-Colonel Rowland Fielding, which I refer to on page 140 of ‘Arras South’ in connection with Croisilles Railway Cemetery. So frequent are the letters that they really amount to a diary […]

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