My grandfather, Tom Verrinder, seated second row down far left, with his Troop of the 9th Lancers in France in 1916. All of these men are privates (the term 'trooper' was not used in Lancer regiments until after the war). The distinctive 9th Lancers cap badge can clearly be seen. Several of the men wear Good Conduct stripes (reverse chevrons on the lower left sleeve), awarded to Privates and Lance-Corporals for at least two years' service without being subject to formal discipline, and showing that these men were pre-war regulars who were with the regiment in 1914. The two men on the right also have the vertical wound stripe on the same sleeve. Since the wound stripe was first authorised by Army Order 206 of 6 July 1916, this gives a terminus post quem for the photograph, which was almost certainly taken late in the year as my grandfather was away from the regiment with a dismounted party from the start of the Somme offensive on 1 July for almost five months (photo from my grandfather's collection).
Ninety-nine years ago this morning my grandfather Tom Verrinder and his brother Ed were saddled up with their squadron of the 9th Lancers behind the front line south-west of Albert, waiting for the breakthrough that was expected to follow the first hours of the British Somme offensive. They had trained for five months previously in the New Forest learning to use lance, sword and rifle from horseback, and the Battle of the Somme was the be their first experience of war ...
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A little over ninety-nine years ago one of my great-great uncles died of his wounds near the river Aisne in northern France, a few weeks after the outbreak of the First World War. He was one of the ‘Old Contemptibles’, the regular soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force which was all but destroyed by the end of that year, among the first of some eight million men of all sides killed by the time of the Armistice on 11 November 1918 ...
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With the celebrations this week of the seventieth anniversary of the Dambusters Raid, I have special reason to remember one of the other dambuster raids carried out by RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War - the attempt in December 1944 to breach the Urft and Schwammenauel Dams on the Ruhr River, directly in the path of the US 9th Army as it fought through the Hürtgen Forest into Germany ...
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