Reading WIPERS A gripping account of the first battle of Ypres, based on eye witness accounts by TIM CAREW Pages 70 to 72 refer to a young lad sub lt Francis ORME 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers Dead at 18 yrs and 9 months One of millions of stories but moving and sobering and a reminder of the great grinding hungry pitiless monster of war and the waste of so many lives with so much potential
Recommend Wipers as a read even if just for those pages 69 to 72 You meet young Orme as a Gentleman Cadet and how he just scrapes through, then was stuck inspecting rifles, doing paperwork, counting socks at the Regimental Depot at Wrexham Then suddenly, he is informed that on the morrow, he and 109 N.C.O.s and men are off to Flanders In Le Havre, he languishes in glutinous mud but labelled a rest camp He arrives at the Front and reports to Captain Arthur Roberts of the 2nd Queen's Royal Regiment, in command of the divisional reinforcements (enthusiastic salute) "I wonder if you could tell me where the 2nd Royal Welsh Fusilliers are?" Roberts jerked his thumb towards a group of 60 or 70 men squatting stoically in a ditch "There they are." The subaltern stared and gulped "And... er... Who's in command?" "I suspect," said Roberts, "that you are." So Francis Orme, aged 18 years 9 months is elevated to temporary command of the 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers. The remnants of the fusiliers went back into the line that evening (fighting rest periods rarely more than 6 hours duration at that period) and before another day had dawned, the name of yet another officer had been added to the list of the regiment's fallen officers Second Lieutenant Francis Orme Brilliantly portrayed as a nice average lad wanting to do his bit and hardly out of school The simple words of the end of his story just shock my heart
Will put this one on my Amazon reading list. Starting in on WW1 books now. Sounds like a good one. Thanks for the narrative and recommendation.
Hi Clive, Brilliant,what took you so long, When I uploaded that book and lottery ticket,i said to the wife "I bet Clive check's that ticket out" regards.....Graham.
Just been in contact with someone working on war graves and one of their great interests is Ypres and I will retrieve the title of the book he suggested as the best book to read on the subject. I have been sidetracked by a cosy whodunnit but next to read is THE FIRST AND THE LAST by Adolf Galland The German Fighter Force of WW2 with forward by Douglas Bader who says that in 1940, the 2 names of German fighter pilots as the first main names discussed in the messes of Fighter Command were Galland and the other Mölders Galland invited Bader to dinner in 1941, when Bader was in hospital after his plane's tail was knocked off Galland's version is in this book and Bader's version in Paul Brickhill's Reach For The Sky I do like the fact that it appears Galland chose his frontispiece photo to be of himself and his mechanic
I saw this WW1 memoir in a store today. Seems to be regarded as a classic but I'm unsure if this colonial would get much from it. Worth a read? Anyone? Goodbye to All That Robert Graves
Highly recommended! I don't read much to do with WW1, but picked this one up at the library and really enjoyed it. Very descriptive.
I would recommend it as well. A classic. A bit slow to start (mainly his school days) but his experiences on the Western Front and his post war life are good reading. He served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. This colonial has read it several times now. Scott
i warn you in advance..... this posting is going to ramble on quite a lot, so please pay attention ! ...... It started with my watching a TV program late yesterday evening, all about the terrible crash of the wonder plane Concorde on the 25th July 2020. concore air crash tv film - Bing video It was a good program, setting out to examine the cause of the crash which killed every one aboard, some 109 passengers and crew and also some 4 people in the hotel on which it crash landed. In the early hours of this morning I was laying awake thinking about the tragedy and this in turn led me to think about a fictional book i remembered reading as a young man, namely Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder that dealt with a rope bridge that had collapsed in Peru killing five people and a monk who tries to establish a link between all the casualties that gave reason to their death. To cut to the chase...... I have just bought kindle versions of Concorde by Christopher Orlebar and Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder and am trying to find time to read both books.. I wonder if some kind soul can send me a link to the names of all those who died on the Concorde on that fateful day so that I can pursue my crazy feeling that their may have been some common cause for their untimely death ? Ron
I have finished reading The Day the Nazis Came by Stephen R. Matthews ISBN 978-1-78606-128-7 The true story of a childhood journey from the occupied Channel Islands o the dark heard of a German prison camp Great reading, with a couple of errors included. But the boy was only 5 when he was interned. Stefan
I've read a number of memoirs penned by their authors in old age (often self/privately-published) and there seems to be a mistaken belief that the writing is 'purer' (and hence somehow 'better') if it is written entirely from memory without consulting outside sources. At the other end of the equation, we have writers and interviewees who waste a lot of time/pages trying to contextualise their own story with well-established historical narrative. The middle-ground--the thing a good editor can introduce--is to write the story and then 'fact-check' the objective events against the historical record. There's a great deal of value in saying 'at the time we believed...' or 'for many years survivors like me thought...', for that is the lived human experience that we don't always get from the historians.