Tag: Alan Malcher Military Historian

Four recipients of the Victoria Cross during the Great War. IWM image dated 1917.

From left to right:

Private Michael O’Rourke VC, MM 7th (1st British Columbia) Battalion Canadian Expeditionary Force, awarded the VC in France on 15/17 April 1917.

Sergeant James Ockendon VC,MM of the 1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers, awarded the VC in Belgium on 4 October 1917.

Private William Boynton Butler VC, 17th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, awarded the VC in France on 6 August 1917.

Corporal Ernest Alfred Egerton VC, 16th Battalion Sherwood Foresters, Awarded the VC in Belgium on 20 September 1917.

British Homefront during WW2: Bomb Disposal.

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)

London Rifle Brigades during the Great War, December 1914.

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

Dover: 20 miles from Calais and Britain’s frontline town during the Battle of Britain (10 July 1940 to 31 October 1940)

Newsreel from the archives, Imperial War Museum.

British Army entering Belgium 1944 (Pathé News)

Alan Malcher

RAF conducts bombing raids on German industrial areas (1944)


British Path

RAF performs low-level attacks in Netherlands (1942)

Pathé News

HMS Barham 1941.

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 the famous Canadian War mother of World War One.

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.

Remembrance Sunday is not only for the men and women killed in action during the two world wars and all conflicts since then.

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