Ladies & Gents,

Pal's,

Thought I would post a picture of some Forum Pal's at the Menin Gate taken on Monday night when I gate crashed Tafski's retirement trip!

Hopefully I can remember most the names, sorry if I get them wrong but I had been stupidly drinking Rasberry beer earlier!

Left to right!

On phone- Dont know! Garron, ?, Tafski, Barrie Duncan, Yours truly, Nigel, Alan (Hudsonwhistle!)

Regards,
Scottie.

Looks a bit parky there! Great pic. Good to put faces to names

Diane

It was freezing with a really biting wind howling through the Menin Gate!

They are obviuosly made of much stronger stuff than me! I understand that they were actually camping, I spent a lovely cosy and warm night at the wonderful Varlet Farm!

Regards,
Scottie.

What a motly bunch !

Mick

Yes Mick,

I like to presume a little bit like our relatives were in the Great War walking down that historic old road towards the Front!

Regards and best wishes,
Scottie.

Exactly mate,
I have to wait until October before I'm next there.


Mick

Good pic Scottie. You seem to have dribbled some rasberry beer down your front!
Geraint

Geraint,

good job there are no pictures of me as the night progressed! The dribble became a torrent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Regards,
Scottie.

I am sure that I seen that lot on Most Wanted by Interpol. Kind of reminds me of the good the bad and the ugly mainly the ugly but there hearts are in the right place . Best wishes Bruce and stay safe out there .

Dan

"Don't Know" is Cally (Dave (59165)'s lad) and "?" is Dave (59165) himself.

I'm off shot to the right (might have been for the best as I hadn't slept for nearly 40 hours at this point (neither had Dave)) talking to Soren and Andy was , quite sensibly, in his pit at this time.

Dave.

(PS. I wouldn't openly mention to the world that I'd been drinking frambozen in a public place such as this forum...some Belgian members might be getting the wrong idea about you!!! )

they looked fine last night
cheers
kind regards
sabine

Oh.
I forgot about the 40 hr.thing.....
thats probably as good excuse as any I'll find for looking as ugly as that .
I'm actually Tom Cruise's stand in

that was earlier on layer that night well lets just say a little different great time was had great to meet up with scottie and the bulldogs

keep eyes skinned for tour report
tafski

Hello Scottie,

It was good to meet you just down from the Gate, and thanks for what you said. I couldn't make much of a response at the time.

Look out for Bruce's report, It should make for interesting reading.

Cheers,

Nigel

Dave,

thank you for filling in my 'Dont know' and ? I am afraid its old age!

For some reason drinking the Frambozen before visiting The Gate has become a little tradition with my trips, must say standing there sipping them in public I do feel a bit like a character from 'The Blue Oyster Bar in Police Academy!'

Nigel,

great to meet you mate, it was heart felt and you did not have to say a thing. Really looking forward to reading Bruce's report.

Just sorry that i could not have spent more time with such a fine bunch of decent people (Including Tafski!)

Regards and best wishes,
Scottie.

Was nice to say hello to you Scottie, just a shame there wasn't more time to chat or get a beer in.
The ceremony at the Gate on Monday, was as ever, spine-tingling. Sincere thanks go out to someone for making it possible for me to be involved in the wreath-laying ceremony. I'm glad I wore the kilt travelling, even it did end up feeling like part of me after three train journeys and two flights!

Anyway, am I the only one waiting with baited breath for the official post-action report from the CO who organised this invasion of Poor Little Belgium? Bruce, where are you mate!?!

Still RECOVERING
tafski

Its a good job Matron has lost her reading glasses! Think they are with Broomers teeth,

as has been said what a motley crew lol

Mandy

Yeah, I can understand why Bruce So much for the 'quiet' night on Saturday to leave us fresh-faced and fit for the journey home - I think it was after 4am when I finally figured out how to get in my sleeping bag, hardly worth it given we were up at 6 on the Sunday!

Mandy, I'll take Motley Crew as a compliment

Well where do we start??? first of all i would like to say a big thank you to all the bulldogs who attended my retirement bash , also the party crasher (Scottie), some of the bulldogs had travelled a fair distance Nigel,and Barry who both started their journey by plane to reach the final destination,also a very big thank you to my driver Adrian who drove us everywhere and did a great job to say he had never driven abroad before he was excellent,we wont mention the roundabout redoubt

We all assembled at Dover aprox 00.30 on monday morning thinking we could book in and after going through french passport control park up and get our heads down till the 4.00am crossing this was not the case ,as we were so early we were sent out and told to come back an hour before sailing either that or go on the 2.00am crossing,as we were still short of a bulldog who was travelling down from lancs we decided to come back later with a full compliment of bulldogs so technically our party had been out and back in to the country in under 10 mins or as some one said extradited even before the tour had started,plus the only car to be pulled in to be searched was guess whos ?? yep adrians.Well no wonder two in the back were wearing shamags so what were we to expect,!!!! the customs officer was impressed with the rather large pie that was in the boot.
after boarding threre was the usual scrum to get a breakfast and some even got to the bar !!! no names mentioned you know who you are, gladley i wasnt one of them

On arrival the other side we made our way to ypres in convoy,but like all good plans it went out of the window,so the convoy was split up and we all made our own ways to ypres, will close for now for others to add , confirm or deny any of the above also if they have pics post them

to be continued

Tafski

Thanks for asking me to go with you Bruce, I wouldn't have missed that for anything. I was as impressed with Adrian's meat and potato pie as the customs officer was, and my first impressions were surpassed when I got to eat some. It was a delight in pastry.

The breakfast on the boat was very nearly edible with the exception of the tomato and the toast but the rest of it was just what the doctor ordered.

Once the convoy got broken up and the route card lost it's meaning I had to fall back on memories of my other trips, but having never aproached Ieper from Dunkerque before I was navigating with one eye closed, but as we can see we got there in the end and not too long after the others. Given that Adrian had never driven on the continent before he coped admirably and, I think, relaxed enough to enjoy driving there by the end of the week.

The party divided itself between the two large cuckoo clocks that were to be home for the next week and while some went off into town and explored the local area (possibly looking for the tap thief), some of us went off to bed for a well earned sleep with a view to waking about lunchtime to make our first visit. There was ice on the ground and the idea of a warm sleeping bag was appealing.
And so to bed.....

The next installment will appear soon.

I am sure some one will post a pic of our two large cuckoo clocks , these were good for some and as you can see below Garron booked a single room apartment flash git

For the "non-sleeping group", I think these first few hours were very productive... I got several shots from Ypres Town cemetery* that I wanted for a present project and one of Ridge Wood for one in the pipeline. Andy also, I think, had a useful couple of hours, managing to strike some more names off his humungous (though rapidly shrinking) list of RB casualties whose graves he wanted to photograph in the southern battlefields areas. Furthermore, though it was cold, it was an extremely pleasant morning...these are rare enough and I hate to miss them!

(*quite lucky I did, really as, though it was intended to, no return was made to there)


...Ridge Wood...

...Dikkebusch Old cemetery (did you get the shots of the men you wanted from there Bruce? If not, there's a chance that I may have got them as I took a few random WW1 grave photos in there a couple of years back)...

cheers dave
i diddnt get them as i was on sleeping duty and am i glad i drew the short straw

If i recall correctly (my memory of that first day gets a little fuzzy from around lunchtime onwards), I recieved a call from Bruce "we're awake ...where are you???" on the road back from Kemmel and a wander into town was then made for refreshments. This was followed by a quick visit to Soren (yeah...cheers for the info about the houses right opposite your front door!!! ) and much loitering around waiting for "someone" to open their shop (never happened) to pick up some wreaths....A few of us then headed off for some more beers at T'klein Rijsel en route to the railway station to pick up our most northerly Kamerad...

...I'll let someone else continue the story about the Menin Gate ceremony (because I missed it!) and the saga of the booma-wreath! (which will actually take us nicely up to Scottie's photo posted at the beginning of this thread)

Enter the baz looks not bad after a few pints of rememberance beer and this pic should get up broomers nose a suitcase with wheels bet he wouldnt curse barry

I had only had one beer by the time that pic was taken Bruce, and it was a Leffe in Glasgow airport at around 7:45am! And in all fairness, the wheelie case was only used on wheels when well out of the airport
Not a bad journey truth be told. I shall time it better in future, and not be trying to work out which train to get while sharing a platform with thousands of disgruntled commuters! The train from Brussels-Noord to Ypres was pleasant enough, once we got into the countryside anyway.
I never managed to get a piccie of our 'Cuckoo Clock' accomodation (nice description there Nigel), but hopefully someone will post one up so the other forum pals can see how dedicated we were to making this as realistic a Western Front experience as possible! (Imagine five fully grown adults, fed on dodgy rations and strong beer, sharing a room the size of a prison cell - you start to get the picture!).

One of my first pics was of the Menin Gate post-ceremony:

Click to view attachment

Here is a shot of the cuckoo clocks from the campsite's website..... a more recent one will follow soon. We had the two on the left and there is now a low hedge and a good deal of sogginess between there and the spot where the photo was shot from. The crocodile and rabbits are nowhere to be seen.



I'm glad the non-sleeping group had such a productive time.... I now think I should have joined them because as tired as I was I often became aware that even though I was still awake I was snoring and making noises similar to a cow walrus calling her errant pups to order and so I stopped myself from going to sleep properly. It has to be said though, I was not the only one pushing out audible ZZZs. No names - no pack drill!

Sorry Dave, Menin Gate and wreath laying is a little bit of a sore subject. I did all I could to get a decent photo without using flash and without a tripod. Unfortunately I was not steady enough and every shot I took was blurred and useless.

Perhaps Barrie would like to fill us in on what it was like to place a wreath as part of the main 8 o'clock ceremony?

Ahh Remembrance Beer! It was duty calling and duty done well!

Cheers,

Nigel

I had been to the Gate several times and experienced the ceremony, which never fails to move me. To take part in it with Adrian was something else, and I'm thankful to you guys for letting me do so - I just hope we did you proud!

We went to Essex farm to see Franz & Mel from the diggers & whilst tramping round looking for a VC bloke,I found this kid;


The ground was horridly muddy,like an ice rink & I only had no tread trainers on & fell right on the back of me heed,bad fall but it seemed ok after a while.


*edited out *
More later but,here's my fave foto of the trip;

Later.
Dave.

Geez Dave, thats rough mate - if I had known the knock was so serious I'd have refrained from laughing my **** off and taking pics of you rolling about in the mud! Hope everything is alright and you get the all clear from the Doc's - keep us posted mate.

Barrie

Ditto Dave!

That goes for me too. I didn't see the fall, but it seems now that it was more serious than we all thought. We're all rooting for you Dave.

Cheers mate,

Nigel

Day 2 (day 1 night is a bit of a blur - my only evidence of it's existance being a decidedly "odd" photograph taken at 1am involving 2 of our party and a roll of toilet paper!!!!) began with quite a terrifying site as the members of Hut 4 traipsed down for ablutions at stupid o'clock in the morning (I'll seek permission to post a photo before I do!). After Hut 3 "eventually" decided to half-heartedly do the same a trip up to Franz's was then made (amongst other reasons, to get some money changed seeing as no where in Ieper seems willing to do this any more!) en-route to Dixmude and the Dodengang. A while was spent here, followed by a meander around Essex Farm cem (which involved Dave's accident and Nigel's tribute to the men of the West Riding Div (I still don't think Bruce has quite forgiven me for using the memorial as a climbing frame so that I could get a decent view of the northern canal line ) before heading north to Dixmude.

A wander around the Dodengang was then followed by lunch in the nearby tavern. There was an intended short Salient tour to follow, but time was getting short as we had to be at Gunners Farm for a small, but extremely meaningful, ceremony for 4pm and so it was cut short (Cement House and Langemarck Soldatenfriedhof (for a couple of nice "Then and Now" shots( )) before moving to the south of Ploegsteert and Gunner's Farm...

...over to someone else now...

Dave
hope all is well this has come as a bit of a shock will be in contact
tafski

some one mentioned the ablutions well heres a scene from what appears to be cpl Clinger from M.A.S.H returning from the latrines

On a more serious note the above bulldog AKA Adrian had never been to visit the battlefields and had a relation KIA in the great war, he believed that his relative had never been visited by family so he wanted to pay his respects ,before the bulldog trip a little information was gleened about his relation and passed on to Dave Croonaert, who did a thorough investigation on Private F Bell of the 7th Suffolk Regiment KIA 1st Aug 1915 aged 28 and was buried at Gunner farm

I will post some pics and then allow Dave Croonaert to explain the rest

Who's the cuddly big-blue-eyed furry with the slightly ruffled look?

Kate,

That's one of Frans & Mel's kittens. It was under a coffee table when we arrived and after sizing us all up, he or she came out to be a bit nosy and ended up perched on my knee posing for Dave 59165's camera. For a moment I think the little moggy really enjoyed being centre of attention.

Cheers,

Nigel

Now there was me thinking it was me

Nothing to explain really, apart from that it was nice to be able , for once, to actually be able to visit the exact spot within a meter or two of where a researchee actually fell. Basically, it was one of those rare occasions when the war diaries and regimental histories, when used in conjunction with several differently dated trench maps and diaries and accounts from other soldiers and units that were in the area, gave enough detailed information to actually pinpoint the exact spot where a small action took place. With the help of linesman, it was also possible to trudge out into the extremely muddy field and place Adrian on the spot his relative died (as said, within a meter or two, but, for that area the geo seemed spot on to about a meter so I'm happy that we were exact) - the car was on the site of the trench he left from, Adrian stood on the spot his relative died and I stood on the "target" of the raid (he died in a short stretch of an abandoned German trench so it was a pretty precise locality) so it gave a nice perspective on the events of that summer's night. To cap it all off for Adrian, we found several .303 rounds and cases, the ubiquitous shrapnel ball and a few fragments of SRD jar on the spot which, I presume, are now proudly stored in South Wales.

Not a lot to see really, but an extremely historic field for some (taken from just in front of the British frontline looking over a narrow no-man's land to the German line and the area of the ill-lucked "harrassing action" of the night of 1st August 1915)...

The mud was that sticky that it was still falling from my boots whilst at Kew on Thursday afternoon! (quite funny to think that I was probably depositing bits of actual battlefield all over the NA - maybe they should give that a box number too!!! )

It was the authentic ww1 experience, mud mud and more mud.

The grave of Cpl Pugh, the man who died with Frank Bell, at Gunners Farm

The entrance to the cemetery.

Frank Bell's entry in the Cemetery Register