Recent holiday with WW1 connections

Most people get on a plane or a train and head off to the sun or the snow to relax, well this really is not us.

Our recent holiday saw us driving through Europe spending some relaxing! time in Austria and then heading back. The interest to our readers of this kind of wacky race around Europe comes in some of the places we visited.

I our first day we visited another 6 Commonwealth War Graves sites around Loos, Arras and the Somme. This has been an ongoing project of ours that was born out of the research we are carrying out into the names of the men on the Morton War Memorial. One thing we always wanted to do was turn the names into real people and as part of this we set out our goal and decided that as we could never meet these people, the next best thing would be visiting their graves or memorials.

At the start of our holiday we realised that out of the sixteen names on the memorial we currently had visited only eight. One name is commemorated in Gallipoli, Turkey and one we could not find out who he was, so that leaves us with six more that are all in northern France.

So, here we are on day one of our holiday planning to visit four of our fellow Morton Lads but as luck would have it we caught an earlier Eurotunnel train, allowing us an extra couple of hours. In the end we were able to visit all six on the one day.

The cemeteries and men in question are listed below and each contains a link to the photographs we took at each (Click on the cemetery) and our history page for each man (Click on the soldier’s name)


Apologies if you are interested in one of the names that still haven’t been added to our site yet. I promise I will get round to writing up the research….. eventually.
Following a great night in Arras we continued on with our travels and during the trip we were also lucky to visit Verdun and also Ypres.
I must add one last comment, if you get even the slightest chance to visit the new Flanders Fields Museum in the Lace Hall in Ypres, please take the chance whilst the current interactive exhibition is still running. This is probably one of the most moving museums I have ever visited.
Jamie

The start of Blogging…

Ok Folks, well we have arrived at a blog. Why? you may ask.

Well we are constantly adding to our research that is carried out for our hobby of history. Over the years interested people have asked questions about our research, many comment about the lack of updates on the www.jamieandsue.co.uk website, many don’t know that we have Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts that may or may not get regular updates. Our family history research can be found on Ancestry.co.uk, our photos on Flickr, our travels on Facebook and our occasional thoughts and tidbits on Twitter. No one media is best for getting the varied and sometimes small information that we track down communicated to our families, friends and fellow researchers that may be interested

This blog will hopefully be used to keep people up to date with our latest breakthroughs, travels, research and the occasional off topic piece of information that may help others with their research.

A bit of background then?….
Originally we started out with family research for a family tree and over the year have been sidetracked into Local History, Military history and generally researching anything of interest.

Currently the following topics appear in our research:-

  • Sue’s family story
  • Jamie’s family story
  • Morton and Hanthorpe village history
  • The Morton War Memorial
As things change we will try and get the information across in the form of this blog. 

18th April 1918

Thursday 18th April 1918

Horbling

Today we learn of the sad death of Captain Allison Gould Smith of Horbling who died today serving his country with the 7th Battalion Loyal North Lancashire Regiment.

He will be missed by all in the village, his sacrifice will not be forgotten. Our condolences have been sent to George and Helen Smith, his paremts, on this sad occasion.

17th April 1918

Wednesday 17th April 1918

Bourne

Today we learn of the sad death of Pte Harold Leonard Joyce of Bourne who died of wounds today serving his country with the 2/5th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment.

He will be missed by all in the village, his sacrifice will not be forgotten. We pass on our condolences to his parents Mr & Mrs Fred Joyce of Bedehouse Bank.

16th April 1918

Tuesday 16th April 1918

Bourne & Witham on the Hill

Today we learn of the sad death of Arthur Head of Bourne and Witham on the Hill who was killed today serving his country with the 1st Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment near Wytschaete in Belgium.

He will be missed by all in the town, his sacrifice will not be forgotten.