Trench Ghosts part 4

Trench Ghosts part 4

Langemark A few trench ghosts I did last week then got distracted and forgot about. One of Langemark and one of the Sugarloaf salient at Fromelles. The Langemark rephoto leaps out straight away. It’s also familiar to anyone that’s ever visited the German...
Aerial ghosts: Messines updated

Aerial ghosts: Messines updated

I had a very interesting email today from Gil Bossuyt of frontaaltours.com which has prompted this post. Gil has been looking at the image I originally colourised in this piece. It goes thus: “I went searching on trench maps to recognize some road structures,...
Vanishing Point: Dartmoor – father and son

Vanishing Point: Dartmoor – father and son

There’s a focus, out there. You’ll see it in most cemeteries on the old front. The famous dead, the men, and boys who achieve some infamy by dint of their bravery, age or circumstances. Sometimes it’s a footballer who scored big in 1912 before...
Vanishing Point: Bernafay Wood

Vanishing Point: Bernafay Wood

Bernafay Wood After Carnoy the cloud started to drop, a shield of it obliterated the sun. Within twenty minutes the light had almost completely failed, the air filled with prickles of moisture. It took a good hour to lift as the edge of a small front slid in from the...
Vanishing point: Courcelette

Vanishing point: Courcelette

I’ve been fortunate at times out on the front, walking the levelled trenches, across the flattened shell holes and in the regrown woods. You meet people, some you know via the curious enmeshed world of social media, shared interests in a shared space eventually...
Lost boys: Sid Northrop

Lost boys: Sid Northrop

I recently rediscovered this. It was something I’d put on Flickr. It is the tale of another family member and his last few days and hours in the Great War. We visited the panel he is remembered on at Tyne Cot a couple of years ago. He was my grandmother Jesse...
Great War: Verdun in postcards

Great War: Verdun in postcards

Fort Vaux – Artillery observation post. A century on from events. These are in fact a post-war set of tourist cards I bought as part of an album at a flea market in France.  These are basically Verdun through a lens from some time after everything had been...
Great War postcards: Blinded

Great War postcards: Blinded

Blinded A set of six postcards produced by the National Institute of the Blind, now RNIB for St Dunstans in Regent’s Park. These were fundraisers for the trust. A slightly mawkish view of something fairly horrific, but then how do you honestly portray being...