LOCALITIES AND THEIR WAR MEMORIALS
CARMARTHENSHIRE
ROLL OF HONOUR A site which presents ongoing research
into all the men and women of Carmarthenshire who died in the war.
MORE THAN
A NAME The stories behind the real people who might
appear to be "just names" on the Stockport, Cheshire, war memorial. This
site is a the record of an ongoing study by John Hartley. Look for
his name on the "Hellfire Corner" contents page to see some of his moving
Research and Remembrance articles.
CHAILEY
1914-1918 Paul Nixon's site about the Parish of Chailey,
in East Sussex.
DERBYSHIRE
LADS AT WAR: 1914-1918 Andrew Hesketh's site
includes listings of the names onon many of the county's memorials.
WOLVERHAMPTON
WAR MEMORIALS |On this site, Doug Lewis presents his
research on the surprisingly large number of memorials in Wolverhampton.
REGIMENTAL AND UNIT HISTORY
THE KAISER'S
CROSS Chris Boonzaier's growing site, dealing
with the German Army of 1914-18.
THE
STORY OF JOHN BARDGETT AND THE 11th (SERVICE) BATTALION BORDER REGIMENT -
THE LONSDALES
Christopher Szigeti's website in memory of his grandfather.
BLACK COUNTRY
TERRITORIALS Stuart Briscoe's expanding site on the
history of the 6th Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment. Includes
a very useful database of names, and more.
THE
BEDFORSHIRE REGIMENT IN THE GREAT WAR This site by
Steve Fuller has a wealth of information about the regiment's part
in the Great war.
4th CANADIAN MOUNTED
RIFLES A website dedicated to the men of the 4th Canadian
Mounted Rifles (Central Ontario Regiment). Ian Forsdike's site is a
place of remembrance to those men who served with the 4th CMR in the Great
War, and offers itself as a point of focus for relatives and researchers
today.
THE ACCRINGTON
PALS This site tells the story of the
Accrington Pals in detail. The area around Serre, where the Pals Battalions
attacked on 1st July, 1916, is one of the most moving places on the Western
Front. Andrew Jackson has served the memory of the Pals well in this first
class site.
THE
LAST POST ASSOCIATION The Last Post Association is
the organisation which organises and manages the daily act of remembrance
at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres. There can be few
organisations which have such an unbroken record of service to the Spirit
of Remembrance.
THE THIEPVAL
PROJECT This new initiative has been
set up as a charity with the aim of raising funds to provide an education
centre at Thiepval, near the Memorial to the Missing. The aim is to provide
information to friends, families, school-children and those interested about
the actions which occurred on the Somme during the first world war.
THE GALLIPOLI
ASSOCIATION The Gallipoli Association's
objective is to preserve the memory of the men who served in and commemorate
the events of the Great War campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula Turkey that
took place between April 1915 and January 1916. The Association has members
worldwide. They range from veterans of the campaign itself, authors, specialists
and amateur historians to relatives of those who served and those who simply
have a desire to remember.
THE AUSTRALIAN COMMEMORATIVE PLAQUES
PROJECT Many visitors to the Western
Front (and other parts of the world) will have noticed the beautifully-made,
informative bronze plaques set up in places where there was a significant
Australian involvement. Like most people, I suppose, I thought that these
were the product of the Australian Government. Not so - they are the
work of Ross Bastiaan, who raised the money, negotiated for the sites, wrote
the text and even cast the plaques himself. Ross now has a site of
his own which gives more information about his project. I'm pleased
to be one of the first sites to link to it.
AN UNFORTUNATE
REGION "An Unfortunate Region" is how an officer described
the front line area in a Christmas Day (1915) letter home. Four months later,
the officer was dead, his body lost. Marco Hoveling and Peter van den Heuvel
have made this site, which is about the battlefields themselves, and the
history to be found there. Marco and Peter are well-known for their enthusiasm,
experience and dedication to battlefield history, and this site is a
very important addition to the existing Internet Great War sites.
THE SWAVESEY CHRONICLES -
1914-1918 This site is a moving document
of Remembrance dedicated to the Great War casualties of one small English
rural community - the village of Swavesey in Cambridgeshire, where the author
of the site, Phil Curme, lives. Phil showed me round the village when we
met there last summer. His views on Remembrance exactly coincide with
my own and he has done an excellent job of perpetuating the memory of the
Swavesey men who never came home.
THE "IN FLANDERS FIELDS"
MUSEUM, YPRES The website of the Museum in
the Cloth Hall at Ieper (Ypres), Belgium. The museum has recently reopened
after an extensive refurbishment, and the new museum gives an excellent insight
into life in Ypres and the surrounding Ypres Salient during the Great War.
Tideway School's FALLEN
HEROES Site s part of the National
Curriculum for England and Wales, pupils aged 15 and 16 who are studying
History as part of their examination studies have to study elements of the
history of the Great War. Many schools give their students the chance to
visit the battlefields of the Western Front and the staff and pupils of Tideway
School, which is in Newhaven, Sussex, England, created this web-site to display
the results of the students' research following their visits.
CAPTAIN
NOEL GODFREY CHAVASSE, VC AND BAR, MC, RAMC.
(1884-1917) Noel Chavasse, son of the
first Bishop of Liverpool, was the only man to win the Victoria Cross twice
in the Great War. When I first learned about his life, many years ago, he
became one of my first inspirational heroes. (Not because of any warlike
attributes; Capt. Chavasse's role in the army was essentially a non-combatant
one - but because of his humanity.) In this site, Ian Jones has created a
fitting Internet Memorial to this brave man.
CARTMEL WAR
MEMORIAL I never tire of seeing good
sites about local war memorials and this one is in memory of the casualties
(16 from the Great War and 3 from the Second World War) commemorated on the
memorial at Cartmel, a small village in the southern part of the English
Lake District. Howard Martin has researched the men and created the site
and he has come across a very rare occurrence - a soldier (Joseph Hibbert)
named on the memorial but completely unknown, until now, to the Commonwealth
War Graves Commission.
ANZAC.ORG This is a new site
produced by the Council of the Department of the Somme. It is hoped that
as the site grows, it will provide valuable information for those wishing
to visit the area, especially those from Australia and New Zealand.
WOLVERHAMPTON
REMEMBERS Wolverhampton is quite near
to where I live. This site, by Colin Haynes, gives an interesting insight
into the variety of war memorials which are to be found in the streets, parks
and buildings of a typical English town, as well as a detailed account of
the building of the town's "official" memorial.
SOMME BATTLEFIELD TOURS
WEB-SITE A commercial site, maintained by James Power.
James and I often swop battlefield visit experiences and his interest in
the battlefields is very personal and sincere. You can tell this if you visit
his site, which is informative in its own right, and not merely an advertisement
for his business.
TRENCHES ON THE
WEB A seemingly ever-growing site which
covers many aspects of the war. You could spend a long time here. Much of
interest, with outstanding visual presentation.
THE
SECOND BATTLE OF THE MARNE A site which
is being developed to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the 2nd Battle
of the Marne.Much of the text is in French, but some pages are in English
and the authors hope to produce an English version of the whole site in due
course.
HUGH PEDEN'S HOME PAGE Hugh is
a Canadian who plays in the Vancouver Police Pipe Band. His love of piping
is obvious but he also includes on his site the Great War recollections of
his Grandfather, William Peden, who enlisted in 1914 and arrived in Belgium
in time to meet the Germans' first gas attack in 1915.
MAN OF KENT - KYLE TALLETT'S GREAT WAR
HOMEPAGE I like Kyle's site because
the things which interest him about the Great War are the the same things
which interest me - what happened to people, and the places in which they
happened. Seriously worth a visit.
THE COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES
COMMISSION This is the national organisation charged
with the responsibility for marking and maintaining graves and Memorials
to the Missing of the "British and Empire" forces. The Commission's
Royal Charter also requires it to answer enquiries about the location of
graves and commemorations. There is a search facility on the site under the
title "Debt of Honour."
THE
FRIENDS OF ST GEORGE'S MEMORIAL CHURCH,
YPRES Just behind the Cloth Hall
at the centre of Ypres, stands St. George's Memorial Church. This is
an Anglican church, built in 1927, as part of the rebuilding of Ypres, to
meet the needs of the British Settlement in Ypres, which was considerable
at the time. The foundation stone was laid by Field Marshal Lord
Plumer in 1927. Just about every item in the church is a memorial to some
unit or man. The church is now maintained by "The Friends" and this is their
site.
THE WESTERN FRONT
ASSOCIATION A long-established, UK-based
organisation with around 5000 members world wide. The WFA has been producing
its high-quality magazines and bulletins for its members for some years.
THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT'S
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS' AFFAIRS This excellent site
has masses of information about Canada's involvement in the Great War. It's
a "must see" site. It also has an excellent links page. It's a credit
to the Canadian National Identity and is an Internet version of the strong
Canadian pride which I've encountered time and again when visiting historic
sites on the Western Front.
JOHN MORCOMBE'S RND/RMLI
SITE John Morcombe was the source of much of the
information used by Kye Tallett when he wrote his Hellfire Corner article
on Pte. John Clegg, of the Royal Marine Light Infantry. Now John has developed
his own site, which expands on the story of his Great Uncle Jack and contains
further interesting articles on the Royal Naval Division and the Royal Marine
Light Infantry in the Great War. There are also articles of
more general Great War interest.
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