Tom Morgan

Pickelhaube spike - Boesinge, near Ypres.

cartridges and shrapnel balls. The cartridge on the left is German (there is iron content in the bullet itself hence the rusting). The others are British. The one on the right is still held in the rusted remnants of its charger clip.

Silver pocket-watch key - Thiepval, Somme

Mills Bomb - Courcelette, Somme

British HE shell, 18 pdr - Le Sars, Somme

German stick-grenade - Flers, Somme

[attachmentid=37456]My main interest is in the Great War battlefields themselves - how they were, how they are today and what can still be seen there. I have a small collection of pick-up items, always taken with the permission of the land-owner. Where a found object is too "pyrotechnically volatile" to move, I just take photographs. Here's hoping that members will find this first batch of interest. Tom "Flying Pig" mortar projectile - Beaumont-Hamel, somme

Grant - yes it is, and it means that he was discharged under King's Regulation 392, Paragraph xvi - "No longer physically fit for service." Tom

Sorry to hear of your bad experience at Langemark, Daniel, especially when you had obviously travelled so far to be there. Before I became a bookseller, I spent 6 years as a full-time battlefield guide, specialising in school tours. Like you, I have noticed that young people today do not grow up having learned the the things that we learned - such as being respectful in a cemetery, removing hats when eating, etc. However, I also learned that young people are actually very keen to do what other people might expect of them - provided that you tell them what other people expect. It's just that no-one ever has, I think. (Including whoever was in charge of their visit, I suppose.) Best wishes - Tom

As Christophe says, MvR was originally buried at Bertangles. After the war, his remains were moved from Bertangles to the German Cemetery at Fricourt. It was from this cemetery that his remains were exhumed, on November 14th, 1925, and taken to Germany. Tom

I hope a comment from a new boy will be of interest. There was a kind of exchange of prisoners in 1914 during the East Africa Campaign. The Germans allowed some prisoners to return to their own side by accepting their "parole" - their word of honour - that they would not fight against Germany at any future time in the war. They did this when they had prisoners whom they couldn't feed or care for. I think that at one stage they wanted to abandon a hospital which contained some British wounded. Rather than take them along, they took their parole and left them behind for the British to find them. Later in the campaign they also released two British officers on their parole. The British also took the parole of Dr. Wolfgang Gothein, whom they had captured at Koronga in September, 1914. Dr. Gothein worked so well as a doctor in a prisoner of war camp that he was released on his parole that he would take no further part in the war. The Manual of Military Law of 1914 has a section on rules for prisoners of war with respect to taking and giving of parole. Tom