Rupert Matthews's Blog

 

Commissioned in 2014 from the artist Loyd LeBlanc, theDefence Dogs Memorial stands outside the offices of the Melton Borough Councilin Burton Street, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. The memorial consists of aGerman shepherd dog, a springer spaniel and a Labrador retriever. The memorial recognizesthe courage and partnership of military dogs and their handlers, trainedat at the nearby Defence Animal Centre since 1946. Two of the dogs trainedhere have been awarded the PDSA Dicken Medal for gallantry and devotion to dutywhile serving. It is considered to be the animal equivalent of the VictoriaCross.

The project was made possible through contributions ofMelton Council, Leicestershire County Council and fundraising of the DefenceAnimal Centre personnel.

Learn more about the Defence Animal Centre here: https://www.army.mod.uk/news/behind-t...

In November 2021 a new war memorial was unveiled on the green at Thurnby Lodge. The monument was revealed in Willowbrook Park after local city councillors & residents worked together to bring the idea to fruition.Cllr Aldred and local resident Chris Hopewell  fundraised thousands of pounds towards the memorial. The unveiling was attended by around 300 people including the Lord Mayor of Leicester, Councillor Deepak Bajaj, Lady Cadets, local clergyman the Reverend Paul Savage and bagpiper Tommy Lierd. Benches and other features were added later. 

 

Unveiled on06th November 1921 in front of a huge crowd led by local clergy and civicdignitaries, Weymouth war memorial s located at the northern end of TheEsplanade at the junction with Brunswick Terrace., The Esplanade (B3155),Weymouth, Weymouth And Portland, Dorset, DT4 7NG. It was designed by localsculptor  Francis W Doyle Jones fromPortland stone with bronze plaques. Plaques to remember the fallen of theSecond World War were added on 8th May 1949.

It is now in the care of Weymouth and Portland BoroughCouncil, which recently replaced some of the more corroded plaques.

 

Unveiled on10 June 1920 Great Ponton war memorial consists of a square obelisk ofCornish granite on a plinth of the same material. Engraving of a laurel wreathon the lower part of the obelisk above the years of the First World War. Alllettering is leaded and on the front face of the monument. The main dedicationand WW1 names are on the plinth while WW2 names on the front face of the base.It stands on concrete foundations.

 

Great Ponton is an English village and civilparish in the SouthKesteven district of Lincolnshire,3 miles (5 km) south of Grantham onthe A1 trunk road,which bisects the village. The tower of the parish church is a roadsidelandmark. The 2001 census recorded a populationof 333, of whom all were of white ethnic origin and 87 per cent describedthemselves as Christian. The average age was 40. The population of thecivil parish had risen to 379 at the 2011 census. It was estimated at 369in 2019.

Among the graves here are 

PRIVATE FRED GIBSON MUSSON 

Service Number: 40831

Regiment & Unit/Ship

Manchester Regiment

4th Bn.

Date of Death

Died 18 November 1918

Age 21 years old

Son of Mrs Musson of Great Ponton

 

And of

SERJEANT RICHARD LAMB 

Service Number: 4802687

Regiment & Unit/Ship

King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry

Date of Death

Died 28 November 1942

Age 36 years old

He was the son of Joseph and Sarah Lamb. He left a widow,  Mary Mabel Short Lamb, of Eyemouth, Berwickshire. He died at Grantham, Lincs

 

 

The warmemorial at Long Clawson in Leicestershire – best know these days for the dairyproducing Stilton Cheese, can be found at Back lane LE14 4PA. Itcommemorates those from the village who were killed in not just the First and SecondWorld Wars, but also the conflict in Aden [1963-67]. The memorial is unusual inthat it was erected in 2016. Prior to that date the village had remembered itswar dead with a Roll of Honour mounted on a wall inside St Remigius Church onChurch Lane. The Roll of Honour is still there, listing the 157 who served inthe First World War.

 

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 War Memorial- Black Watch Corner

Near Zonnebekein Belgium

 

In 2014, astatue of a Black Watch [officially the 42nd Royal Highland Regimentof Foot] soldier was unveiled in Belgium to mark thecentenary of the battle that took place here in November 1914. The bronzestatue, designed by Edinburgh sculptor Alan Herriot, was installed in front of300 regimental veterans at Black Watch Corner.

The official regimental history recorded:

Between 6.30 am and 9 am on 11 November, the heaviestbombardment so far experienced by the British forces broke out; as it lifted, aDivision of the Prussian Guard, ordered by the Kaiser to break the British lineat all costs, attacked the front. Under cover of the bombardment, a strongenemy force drove back D Company and the two platoons of A Company entrenchedat the south west corner of Polygon Wood. C Company under the command ofLieutenant Anderson and in a strong point (point d’appui) 380 yards from thesouth and west corner of Polygon Wood held out firmly. This split the attackinto small parties of 20–30 Prussians, many of whom were soon lost in the woodsbehind. As they emerged from the back of the woods the guns of 41 Brigade RoyalField Artillery, sited one thousands yards west of Nonne Bosschen Wood, openeddirect fire on the enemy at a range of 300–400 yards.

The effect was devastating and the German attack faltered.At 3 pm a counter attack by the 2nd Battalion The Oxfordshire andBuckinghamshire Light Infantry, supported by the Royal Field Artillery,destroyed the remnants of the Prussian Guard and the line between the MeninRoad and Polygon Wood was re-established. At 3.30 pm three Companies of the 1stBattalion The Northamptonshire Regiment, supported by parties of The BlackWatch and Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, advanced from Nonne Bosschen Wood toretake the south west corner of Polygon Wood. This corner was known on alllater maps as Black Watch Corner.  Originally, however, it was the CCompany “strong point” south west of Polygon Wood which was given that name.

On 12 November 1914, the day after the battle, the strengthof the 1st Battalion The Black Watch had been reduced to 2 officers and 109soldiers; the 1st Battalion Scots Guards to 1 officer and 69 soldiers and the1st Battalion The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders to 2 officers and 140soldiers. 

 

 

 

On 31 August 1914 apatrol of Gemran uhlans [light cavalry armed with lances] arrived in Arras, almost directly north of Noyon. They stayed only a few hours beforetrotting off. Six days later they were followed into the city by an entireGerman division, which occupied Arras. The French attacked in October and drovethe Germans out. The Germans retreated only a short distance and throughout therest of the war the city lay within artillery range. Almost the entire city wasdestroyed by 1918, including the famous cathedral.

I drove into Arras on a warm day withthe sun shining down. I had been told that the war memorial featuring an angelstood just outside the railway station in Place Foch. As it turned out thesquare was a short distance from the station, and it took me a bit of time towork out where the angel was to be found.

She is a strikingly modern angel,accompanied by a soldier. Between the two are engraved the words:

"Arras a ses enfants morts pourla défense du droit. La Paix, les ailes largement déployées, debout sur lepromontoire. Le soldat français, hier soldat de Dieu, Aujourd’Hui Soldat del’humanité. Sera toujours le soldat du droit".

My rather poor command of French makesthat to mean:

"Arrashas his dead children for the defense of the right. Peace, wings widely spread,standing on the promontory. The French soldier, yesterday a soldier of God,today a soldier of humanity, will always be a soldier of what is right."

This is a complex monument for thedominating figures are not the only ones here. There are reliefs on either sideof the angel and the soldier. Those on one side celebrate peace, while those onthe other show war. The peace reliefs start with a tractor in the fields withfour farm hands, accompanied by cows, horses, beehives and sacks of flour. Nextcome three miners digging coal. Then there are women at work in the linenindustry, a woman holding a baby and sheaves of corn. The scenes fo war includea soldier in the trenches, a donkey carrying a pack and five marching soldiers.Then there are a sailor, an infantryman and an aviator holding hands. Thenthere is a nurse carrying a tray of medicines and a figure representing “NotreDame de Lorette” that most important war memorial and cemetery. At the topis a bundle of rifles flanked by two croix de guerres and above them a row oftorpedoes.

This is all the work of Félix-Alexandre Desruelles (1865–1943) who was born in nearby Valenciennes. It was inaugurated in1933 by the then famous and much admired Marshal Philippe Petain, who beforethe Great War had been the colonel of the 33rd Infantry Regimentwhich was the main garrison force in Arras. It has been Petain who had takencommand at Verdun and brought an end to the German offensive there at the endof 1916. He won ever greater plaudits from his contemporaries in 1940 when, asPrime Minister, he negotiated what appeared to be a remarkably generous peacefrom Hitler following the surrender of the French armies. As the warprogressed, it became clear that Petain had arranged little more than an abjectcapitulation. By 1945 he was vilified and was thrown into prison having beenconvicted of treason.

This grand monument was damaged byGerman bombs on 19 May 1940. The town council made the rather quixotic decisionnot to repair the memorial. They thought the scars of 1940 merely added to themessage of the horrors of war, so left them there. You can still see themtoday.

 

Yesterday I have my talk on "Plagues, Pandemics and Covid-19" to a History Club in Sussex via Zoom. 

This is - inevitably -  a fairly grim talk but fascinating nonetheless. And in the end it has a message of hope to us all. Humanity has survived far worse diseases than Covid-19. Have a look at this map of the spread of the Black Death across Europe. Up to half the people in Europe were wiped out, and the population did not recover for 400 years. Compared to that, Covid-19 is barely a ripple on the story of humanity - tragic as the disease is for those who suffer from it. 

The talk also looks at how sciene and medicine has struck back on disease. We cover the micro-organisms that cause disease, how they affect a human body and how they spread. That allows the talk to look at pre-modern efforts to combat disease - be it prayer, quarantine or witchcraft - before looking at the first vaccinations against smallpox - as caricatured here by a contemporary print.
The talk also looks at the first outbreaks of what are now familiar diseases, such as when measles [below] first came to Europe. As a new disease hitting a population with no immunity, measles caused millions of death and untold misery. I also explain who such a devastating deadly disease could settle down to become a relatively mild childhood disease.

 But this talk is really a historical overview of the impact disease has had on humanity. The mass deaths of the Black Death and recurrant outbreaks of plague [below] radically altered society, government, religion and the economy of Europe. It changed the direction of history, and we are still living with the consequences. Similarly the cocktail of diseases that European explorers brought to the Americas caused a massive death toll among the Native Americans - up to 95% - and opened the way for European settlement of the New World far more than did guns, technology or numbers.

 The group I spoke to yesterday were particularly interested in the way that disease organisms are subject to the same evolutionary pressures as other plants and animals. Generally this works in the direction of making diseases milder in their impact on the human body, but more infectious. That has been the story of nearly all diseases to afflict humanity - with the noticeable exception of Spanish Flu which became more deadly as time passed because of the way human doctors treated it. A warning for the future. 

Offer a range of over 20 talks, mostly on history subjects. Find out more on my website.

 

Well, that was a pile of misery!

I can't say that I enjoyed this book. Pretty much every character ended up bankrupt, homeless, dead - or all three. Being Grisham, this is a very well-plotted book with gripping court room scenes and some interesting legal twists and turns to the plot.

I'll try not to give too much away, but the central section is a flashback to the Second World War when one of the characters fought heroically against the Japanese. I can't say that this bit worked very well. The action scenes came across as a bit pedestrian. You can tell Grisham is a writer of legal novels, not an action writer.

Overall, one of his weaker novels though not without some interest. But as I said at the start - a complete pile of misery from start to finish.

 St Valentine's Day is on the horizon, so today I gave my talk on St Valentine for the first time this year, and for the first time on Zoom. The group of 40 odd folks were a lively audience. I've spoken to this group before, but again this was the first time on Zoom. 

This is a wide ranging talk that covers the various other saints named Valentine - not just our 14th February chap - before going back to the years of the Roman Empire when the early Christians were persecuted for their faith by the pagan Roman Emperors.

The patron saint of love was, in reality, anything but romantic. This talk looks at the real Valentine, who was martyred on the orders of the Emperor Claudius Gothicus on 14 February 269. It then traces his career after his death as his holy reputation became mixed with spring fertility customs to produce the romantic patron saint of love that we know today. In passing we cover great medieval writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Jacob Voragine. And the talk looks at where is relics are eto be found today - including some rather unexpected places for his feet and hands!

Among the lesser known characters the talk covers is Joseph Ritson. If you look Ritson up in an encyclopedia it will tell you that he was the founder of vegetarianism. But so far as St Valentine's Day is concerned he more importantly wrote a card to his beloved that included the rhyme:

"Roses are red, Violets are blue,
the Honey is sweet, so are you."

Shakespeare eat your heart out. 

The audience today seemed less interested in the historic St Valentine than in how his day had become associated with romantic love, how poets had taken up the chalenge and the way the custom of celebrating your love and lover on 14 February spread around the world. 

I have a range of talks for specific times of the year, including:

The Real St Patrick [March]   [Zoom Friendly]
The Real St George [April]   [Zoom Friendly]
Who was Guy Fawkes? [November]   [Zoom Friendly]
A History of Christmas Foods [December]
The Biography of Father Christmas [December]   [Zoom Friendly]

If you would like to learn more about my talks, or enquire about a booking, see my WEBSITE.