WW1 Exhibition

[nivrip]

Went down to London at the end of last week. God it was hot - I had to dispense with my hat, scarf and gloves on day one.

I went off to the Imperial War Museum one day while the missus went off "shopping." Miraculously, she bought nothing.

It was many years since I last went there but those two 15 inch guns at the entrance are still mightily impressive. Each gun weighs 100 tons and just one 15 inch shell weighs almost one ton. Lots of the ships that carried them had 8 or even 10 of these guns. Just imagine being on the receiving end of a broadside from one of them.

The highlight of the trip was the new WW1 exhibition which opened the week before. It was excellent, very informative and well presented. If you're at all interested in WW1, or even if you're not, go along and see it - it's free admission.

It was disappointing to see one chap walk around one whole section (about a quarter )of this exhibition without once raising his head from his mobile phone. He did not look at one exhibit. Can't imagine why he went.

Go and see it (and please look at the exhibits).

 

[bootneck02]

My Grandfather was at the siege of Sidney Street and at time he was a corporal the officer told him to order the detachment of Scots Guards to open fire which they did and the building burnt down. In 1914 he was a CSM 1st Battalion Scots Guards and was posted to France on the retreat from Belgium all the commissioned Officers were ether killed or wounded and he was the senior officer on parade. The company had been depleted to 80 odd men but they held the line and during the night he would entre no mans land with paper and pencil and note the position of the German guns and return and send the details to our artillery so they could give them hell. He staid OIC for 4 days and nights before any commissioned officers could replace him. He was awarded the MC for carrying out those duties.
In the early part of 1915 February he received shrapnel wounds and was repatriated to blighty and after they removed 4 pieces of metal from his chest he resumed his service with the Scots Guards with the rank of RSM and eventually became Senior RSM of the British army. He retired from the Guards and became of the RSM of the Duke York Royal Military School Dover.
In 1942 he had a lot of pain in his chest and before the doctors at Buckland Hospital could treat him he died, they found at the autopsy a piece of shrapnel had pierced his heart. The doctors had missed a piece in 1915 and that was the piece that killed him.

On a lighter note at Deal when I joined HMRM the RSM a man called Thomas (we called him something else) whilst we were on parade and started to ask why we had joined the Royals, when he got to me and asked the question I foolishly answered " I wanted to join the Scots Guards but was too short 5 ft 6" with that answered he coughed, spluttered and went red in the face and ordered me to double around the parade ground with rifle above my head for about 20 min then gave me extra drill for the rest of the week and it was only a Monday morning.