| For those who really want to know, I'm married with three children
and I live in the West Midlands (Central England.)
On August 4th, 1964, the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the war, I was on holiday and read a newspaper article commemorating the event. I knew that my grandfather (who died before I was born) had served in the army during the war and, looking for something to read on holiday, I went into a bookshop and bought my first Great War book - "In Flanders Fields" by Leon Wolff. I was 17 years old. |
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I am not too interested in the politics (civil or military) of those days, Instead, I particularly like to spend time researching the lives of individual soldiers, and visiting the places in France and Belgium where so much happened all those years ago. I had a fairly quiet life, reading books and writing letters and never meeting too many other people with similar interests, until the Internet came along. Now I have a wide circle of invisible friends who, like me, find a sense of purpose in finding out about what happened to individual people, on a day-to-day basis, so far from home and under so much danger and hardship.
When not visiting the battlefields I enjoy writing about them, although time is limited, and so I usually write relatively short pieces, which have been published both on the Internet and in magazines. Shortly after visiting the Somme Battlefields at Easter 1996, I wrote a Somme Diary in seven parts, which was published on the World War I Document Archive Website. Soon afterwards, my Internet Service Provider, Demon UK, decided to give every subscriber some free Web-Space, and I began thinking about launching my own Great War website and the result is HELLFIRE CORNER.
More recently (and thanks to HELLFIRE CORNER) I was asked to go to France with a TV production team and appear in a programme being shot for the UK Discovery Channel, called "The Somme Battlefields."
Filming at the Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont-Hamel
This was great fun, especially as the magic words "Television Anglais" opened so many doors!
In August, 1999, I took early retirement after 29 years working in Education. I now try to make (half) a living from my interest in the Great War. I guide school parties around the battlefields of Northern France and Belgium, conduct small-group adult tours and do whatever Great War related work comes along.
My hope is that HELLFIRE CORNER will become one of the Internet's leading Great War sites. Contributed articles are always welcome, subject to the usual editor's right of control.
I hope you will enjoy HELLFIRE CORNER and keep visiting.
Copyright © Tom Morgan,
October,1996, December, 1999
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