Tag archives for POW
Fight Another Day by J.M. Langley [Book Review]
Fight Another Day. Langley by J M Langley My rating: 5 of 5 stars Fight Another Day has been sitting on my shelf for years, right next to MI9 (which I only realised was co-authored by J M Langley). I'm not sure why it took me so long to get round to reading it. It fits my usual preferences in a number of ways. It's a first hand accout by an infantry officer, it's about escaping from a POW camp, it's about organising secret agents to work in nazi-occupied Europe. Any one of those would have got Fight Another Day onto my to-read list. Fight Another Day Fight Another Day tells the story of Jimmy Langley from his enlistment in the special reserve of the Coldstream Guards. He gets mobilised in August 1939 and goes to France, and we are…
Remembrance Challenge
We took our cubs to the local war memorial in the Church near the Scout Hall as part of our own remembrance challenge. Before we went the cubs each made a wreath of poppies and wrote a message on it. Each boy did his own personal wreath. We then walked to the Church where we spoke about why we remember, and how different things were in 1914. South Merstham wasn't as big then as it is now, the new houses were mostly built in the 1950s. In the 1911 census there were around 600 men in the locality. About 150 of whom signed up in August 1914. (I'm guessing some would be unfit, others in jobs that couldn't just go off to war and some others not that keen). @N04/15767315095/ Remembrance Challenge The remembrance challenge was to find out as much as…
St.Valery: The Impossible Odds by Bill Innes
This is a collection of first hand accounts, mainly posthumously published from three men who were ordinary soldiers in the 51st Highland Division in 1940. None of them were officers (although one was commissioned after his escape and return home). The main part of the book is a personal account originally published in Gaelic and subsequently translated into english as "A Cameron Never Can Yield". This forms just over half the book and tells the story from the start of the German attack on 10 May 1940 through surrender at St Valery on 12th June 1940, escape on the march into Germany and then life in Marseilles in the winter of 1940-41 followed by a winter crossing of the Pyrenees and time spent in Spanish prison camps before returning to the UK. The other two stories are relatively similar, although…
CLWG December 1999 – Offside Report
What you missed at the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group (CLWG) December meeting. In December we started from 12 at John Rutherford's house and played until after 9pm and chatted with the aid of several bottles of wine until almost midnight. In total we had 13 members at the meeting. It started with a fairly light-hearted game called 'Battling Druids' which was originally designed by Trevor Farrant as a participation game for wargames shows for another club that he is a member of. This involves four 100mm models of druids, four fountains, a cloud with a lighting bolt, hordes of hedges, magic spells and a whole lot of fun. A sergeant air-gunner mans his Vickers 'K' gun from the rear cockpit of a Fairey Battle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Next up was an RAF Aircrew RPG which I ran with the help…