Author Archives: ColinAuthor

Normandy June 2014 – Day#09 Saturday 7th June

June 1, 2015 – 6:38 am

Back to Hill 226… Saturday morning saw Glyn & me back onto Hill 226, wading along the edge of the fields through waist high crops so that I could get some clear photographs to supplement my talk of the battle as we’d not been able to take them yesterday. Whilst their we found a small […]

Posted in 2nd Battalion Devonshire Regiment, Cpl J Chapman, Pte D Lawrence, Pte Thomas Blunt | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Normandy June 2014 – Day#08 Friday 6th June

May 31, 2015 – 10:18 pm

Stand in battlefield tour guide Earlier in the week, I’d received a phone call from Eain Findlay to say that he and his father, Muir, wouldn’t be able to make the trip this year as he’d put his back out. Eain was happy to drive munching on painkillers, but somehow, Muir was less happy with […]

Posted in Normandy Trips | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Normandy June 2014 – Day#07 Thursday 5th June

May 31, 2015 – 10:09 pm

Hill 112 and Albert Figg We were up fairly early in the morning and headed off to Hill 112 ready to meet Albert Figg, a veteran of the campaign there. Albert is the guy who did most of the fundraising to put a Churchill tank on top of the Hill in memory of the men that fought […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Normandy June 2014 – Day#06 Wednesday 4th June

May 31, 2015 – 10:02 pm

A vampire then to bed in a box Tank shells to vases It had rained quite a lot overnight and was still raining when we woke up. So we decided that we weren’t in a hurry. The farm where we were staying had some interesting vases full of flowers, however, somewhat unusually, they were two 90 millimetre shell brass casings. […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Normandy June 2014 – Day#05 Tuesday 3rd June

May 27, 2015 – 5:38 pm

At La Fiere A reasonably early start saw us arriving at the Sullivan family accommodation at La Fiere which is on the banks of the river Merderet which is a key battle in the history of the 82nd Airborne Division Elizabeth, Bill’s wife had found some old wartime photos of Bill that she brought out […]

Posted in M/Sgt Morris Sheppard, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Normandy June 2014 – Day#04 Monday 2nd June

May 27, 2015 – 5:24 pm

German Military Cemetery at Marigny Initially, we’d planned to use this day checking out again Ray Elledge’s crash site where we would have dug up some of the metal. However, as this had now been confirmed as not a crash site, we decided to do something different and decided to head off to Coutances as […]

Posted in 1st Lt FT Gillespie, Flt Lt John W Harder, Normandy Trips | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Normandy June 2014 – Day#03 Sunday 1st June

May 27, 2015 – 2:03 pm

Change of plans to look for Ray Elledge We had planned to take a gentle meander through the French countryside and take our time in driving to our accommodation for the evening at Hebecrevon. However just outside of Abbeville, we received a phone call. My initial thought was to panic as it was obviously a […]

Posted in Major Ray Elledge Jnr | Tagged | Comments (0)

Normandy June 2014 – Day#02 Saturday 31st May

May 27, 2015 – 1:57 pm

Ducks have right of way We were up early ready for breakfast and then our journey further south and east towards the Channel Tunnel. As has been customary over the last few years, we headed first west around the M25 past Heathrow airport and then under London. This route takes approximately the same time as […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Normandy 2014 – Day#01 Friday 30th May

May 27, 2015 – 1:45 pm

Pubs and brewpubs – that’s a different start for us… not! We started off and first went to Banbury where we had lunch in a Hook Norton pub – The Roebuck. Hook Norton being a brewery that neither Glyn nor I had had beers from for a long time. We then continued to Aylesbury, and […]

Posted in Flt Lt John W Harder, Normandy Trips | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

August update

August 8, 2014 – 10:35 am

So August has arrived & still no postings yet of the June trip… so what have I been doing? Well, in the background, I’ve been getting the words sorted ready to post and the same with the photographs… but what’s also taken time out is that I returned to Normandy in July & met (among others) […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)