Colourised image by DB Colour but original B&W source not indicated.
Lieutenant Robert Davies GC, Royal Engineers standing on a 1,200 lb bomb after a Luftwaffe air raid on London. Photograph taken on 25 November 1941 in Dalston, London after Davies defused the bomb.
By DB Colour (original source not known)
Colourised image by DBCoour. Original B&W source not listed)
Members of the London Rifle Brigades in Ploegstreet Wood, Armentieres Belgium. According to the London Rifles Association during the Great War 10,016 were killed during enemy action, 2,644 wounded and 303 captured. Part of the wood is now used by the Commonwealth War Greaves Commission.
Alan Malcher
Newsreel from the archives, Imperial War Museum.
Alan Malcher
British Path
Pathé News
HMS Barham was one of five Queen Elizabeth-class Battleships built for the Royal Navy during the early 1910s. Completed in 1915, she was often used as a flagship and participated in the Battle of Jutland during the First World War as part of the Grand Fleet and saw action during the Second World War.
On 25 November 1941 Barham was sunk by U Boat U331 with the loss of 859 men. Turn up the volume to listen to the commentator.
Charlotte Wood was born on 27 September 1861 in Chatham Kent and later emigrated to Canada. In 1914 eleven of her sons and stepsons served during the Great War (1914-1918) and five of them were killed. It is known her son Peter was killed near Vimy Ridge with the Saskatchewan Regiment and is among the 11,000 Canadians listed as having no known grave and her son Frederick was killed during the Battle of Mons in 1914.
In 1936 Charlotte Wood was the first to place a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey in London on behalf of all Canadian mothers who lost sons during the Great War. In 1939, a few weeks after the start of the Second World War, she died and was buried in an unmarked grave in Winnipeg Brookside Cemetery and a gravestone was erected 60 years later.
Alan Malcher.
On 24 October 1940, 16 year old Aircraftman 1st Class Harry Clack was two days into his military service with No.54 MU RAF when he was electrocuted whilst recovering a German Dornier DO 215 bomber shot down near St Neots when the crane he was operating touched overhead power cables. Harry Clack is thought to be the youngest RAF fatality during the Second World War.
Alan Malcher
Yvonne Cormeau (nee Biesterfield). In 1937 She married Charles Cormeau who joined the Rifle Brigade at the outbreak of war and in 1940 was wounded in France and returned to England. Shortly after his return Charles was killed when their family house was destroyed during a German air raid on London and Yvonne escaped serious injury after a bath fell on top of her and protected her head but their unborn child was killed. After recovering she joined the WAAF’s and was later recruited by SOE and sent her 3-year-old daughter to live in the countryside to avoid the bombings.
On the night of 22-23 August 1943 Cormeau arrived by parachute at Saint-Antoine-du-Queyret to join Wheelwright circuit as their wireless operator in the Gascony area. She frequently cycled 30 miles a day to avoid direction finders and passed over 400 messages to London. In June 1944 she was shot in the leg during a firefight but managed to escape with her wireless and the dress she was wearing and her blood-stained briefcase is on display at the Imperial War Museum.
IWM
Yvonne Cormeau died on 25 December 1997, aged 88 in Fleet Hampshire.
Alan Malcher 