Imber

Thanks for the link Owen , I have enjoyed looking at your photo's. Elsie

 

Ah, remember it well, those pictures bring back memories of several exercises I spent there.

Thanks for posting.

 

Nice photos Owen, I saw this on the news the other day they were having a xmas service it looked really nice.

 

some great photos, too bad that it could not have turned back over to the civilian population.

 

Great photos! Seems such a shame that they people living there never got to go back home.

 

Have been several times as a mate lives near Warminster - one surprising thing I saw this last visit (Easter 2013) was people - grown men with kids, digging ammunition and other metal out of roadside verges - I know very little about such things but saw rotting belts and stuff that wasn't just blank brass - I presume they knew the risks, there are enough warnings posted - but surely there is all sorts of live stuff hanging about from the many exercises? I ushered the kids away in any case....

 

Unless things have changed recently, Imber can be visited rather more than a few days per year - I'm pretty sure that it's a total of four weeks. My mother lives a few miles from the village and I used to visit it regularly ten years ago to marvel at a landscape unaltered by modern farming if littered with wrecked tanks.

I understand the unusually generous visiting period was the result of a court case brought by former residents and descendants who won, to general amazement, the lavish sympathy of the judiciary.

But my information may be out of date - do check before a long journey!

 

Imber was the scene of a very unfortunate training accident
Cut and paste from Wiki

On 13 April 1942 the weather was hazey and six Royal Air Force (RAF) Hawker Hurricanes from No. 175 Squadron RAF and sixSupermarine Spitfires from No. 234 Squadron RAF were being used for a demonstration of tactical airpower at Imber, a British Armytraining ground on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The event was a dress rehearsal for an upcoming visit by Winston Churchill and General George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the United States Army.[2] and attended by a number of military personnel. The Spitfires overflew followed by the Hurricanes. Five of the Hurricanes hit the correct targets: several armoured vehicles and mock tanks. The pilot of the sixth Hurricane opened fire at the spectators before continuing with the demonstration. Casualties were 25 military personnel killed and 71 wounded.[3]
The following day the War Office and Air Ministry issued a joint statement:

During combined excercises to-day in Southern England there was an unfortunate accident in which a number of soldiers, including some members of the Home Guard, were killed and other injured. The next-of-kin have been informed.[4]

First reports were that 14 had died with forty to fifty injured but this was later revised to 23 killed on the day (16 officers and seven soldiers). Four of the officers were members of the Home Guard.[4][5] Two other officers died from wounds in the next few days, one on the 14 April the other (a Home Guard officer) on the 15 April to bring the total deaths to 25.

 

15 year old cadet -QMSI Pat Cracknell REME armourer TA - 'come here laddie' handed an SLR with a 94E grenade (Training coloured chalk) 'top left window' ye gods that beasty kicked. We were acting as enemy for the TA.


Wiltshire - Moonraker land - Salisbury where we do a lot of our shopping love the place!


http://www.communigate.co.uk/wilts/wiltshistoricalmilitarysociety/page17.phtml