"What they said...": 2016

The following members and prospective members attended some or all of the weekend, which was based on scenic Cannock Chase: John Cotterill, Bob Brunsdon, Chris Finn, John Harris, Chris John, David Nunn, David Harvey, Richard Barnes, Tony Otton, Ray Wilkinson, Simon Andrews, Jeremy Mooney, Martin Green, Nicholas Gray, John Hamill, Dave Gargett, Trevor Hek, Anthony Rich, Tim Halstead and Marc Yates.

The idea of the weekend was to look at some of the UK options for Great War tour guides. Although we concentrated on sites on and around Cannock Chase we also looked at what could be covered (including POW camps, training camps and VAD hospitals) elsewhere in the country. In addition we visited the ever-growing National Memorial Arboretum (NMA) at Alrewas, guided by Chris John, and had the traditional guild weekend validations, dinner and quiz.

Our afternoon being guided around the NMA coincided with the opening of their new visitor centre. If you have not been there recently, there are lots of new memorials to be seen. The traditional Guild quiz that evening was so hotly contested that it ended in a nail biting draw.

On Saturday we used a room at the Museum of Cannock Chase for a couple of validations and then heard fascinating talks from Dr Sarah Jane Veevers on VAD Hospitals and Guild Member Dr David Nunn on the Exemption Tribunals. The preserved Brocton Camp Training Hut was then opened for us and Chris John took us out onto the Chase onto the site of this huge camp to see Frieda's Grave and the site of the Messines Terrain Model. Dinner on Saturday in the Beefeater Grill at Longford House, Cannock. On Sunday I took everyone out onto the Chase again to hear tales from the German War Cemetery, Cannock Chase CWGC Cemetery and the Katyn Memorial. Then all over to Letocetum, or Wall as it is now called, for a masterclass from Guild member David Harvey on the Romans in Britain. Finished a weekend of good fellowship and hidden history with Sunday lunch The Trooper at Wall.

Last weekend twelve Guild members gathered in the old university city of Leuven in the Flemish Brabant area of Belgium for a weekend organised by Chris Finn and John Cotterill. The idea behind the weekend (apart from the normal fun and fellowship) was to look at the first half of the 1940 Fall of France campaign as it affected the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Most tours tend to focus on the second half of the campaign, perhaps from the Ypres area to the mole and memorial at Dunkirk via Cassel, the massacre sites at Wormhoudt or Le Paradis, the canal line, Irvine-Andrews VC site, Jimmy Langley’s deliberate fratricide and the beach at Le Panne or Malo les Bains. This weekend was planned to look at events before that, namely the RAF bombing of the bridges over the Albert Canal and the BEF in battle on the Rivers Dyle and Escaut and the Ypres-Comines canal.

We gathered on the Friday night to listen to a strategic scene setter in a conference room at the Novotel Leuven Centrum from Chris. Members had arrived from all points of the compass with Chris and John having come out on the Thursday to be joined on Friday by Jim and Elaine White from Mainz , Francois Wicart and Margaret Pearson from Le Mans , Paul Oldfield from Ypres and Gary Weight from Normandy. Only Scottie Scott, Steve Chambers, Dave Grainger and Tim Halstead had come straight out from UK. On Saturday morning we hit the ground bright and early and drove east towards Maastricht. At Eben Emael we climbed up onto the roof of the largest fortification in France or Belgium to look at the German glider coup de main operation on 10 May 1940. Having seen the damage wreaked on armoured cupolas by shaped charge explosives we moved down to the bridges at Veldwezelt and Vroenhoven which were bombed by the RAF on 12 May leading to posthumous VCs for FO Donald Garland and Sgt Thomas Gray. We had lunch at a new café with a spectacular view actually built within the latter bridge.

On Saturday afternoon we moved west to line of the River Dyle, at Gastuche, where the BEF met the oncoming Germans 14-16 May. We looked at the action fought by 2 DLI which resulted in the first Army VC action of the campaign – the award to Lt Richard Annand. We then drove down the line of the Dyle into the outskirts of Leuven where we visited Heverlee CWGC Cemetery. As well as the graves of Gray and Garland ( whose three brothers also died in the RAF in 1942 , 43 and 45) , we saw the graves and heard the tales of the only Manchester Bomber VC (aircraft type not the town) FO Leslie Manser and six ATS girls from a mixed AA Regt killed in a tragic RTA. In the evening we walked into the picturesque centre of Leuven and, pausing at the 15^th century university library, heard about the destruction of that building and its irreplaceable contents by the Germans in August 1914 and May 1940 and the general subject of German atrocities in Belgium, both real and imagined. We ate at the Troubadour where service was slow that those who had not ordered a starter came to regret that decision.

On Sunday we left Leuven and drove west to the River Escaut, where the BEF stood and fought from 20 to 21 May, whilst their comrades counter-attacked at Arras. We studied in particular the 3^rd Grenadier Guards action on Poplar Ridge, which resulted in the award of the VC to L/Cpl Harry Nicholls. In Esquelmes CWGC Cemetery Steve Chambers took us to the grave of 2Lt Arthur Boyd of the Grenadier Guards, who died trying to hold the river line and showed us his photograph and medals. Then back to the line of the Ypres-Comines attack where the BEF launched a series of counter attacks on 27-28 May in order to hold open the “sack” and allow units to withdraw to the Dunkirk perimeter ……. which is where the other tours start. We dispersed after an interesting weekend on some of Belgium’s lesser known May 1940 battlefields during which our only disappointment was that the Stella Artois brewery, only yards from our hotel in Leuven, only lays on tours for groups of 15 or more!