2012 Trip to The Somme with The Lads.

Well, it was over as almost as soon as it started, a trip to the Somme Battlefirlds from the 13th - 16th April, usual motley crew and a couple of new faces to our little group, my nephew Greg Colson, a friend from Telford local historian and author David Shaw and his brother inlaw Greg.

The trip was just how I like it, walk till you drop, walking over THE BATTLEFIELDS, treading in the footstep of the men many of who died on the very ground we were stood on. Then of course much drinking and eating in the evenings, my capacity to eat lots of French Cheese and drink lots of French Wine has not been diminished by my advancing years since my first trip out to the Battlefields back in 2006.

Nephew Greg has an "eye" for spotting artefacts in the fields and proved a worthy apprentice to The Master Field Walker Dave Shaw, so much so that the Apprentice was outdoing the master before the end of the weekend, the cars weighed several kilo's more than when we entered France but those who know me say it was all the cheese I ate not all the ordnance we found and spirited back to the UK (all safe I asure you), star find was a rather rare find a 37mm Anti Tank Round, now residing in Dave's collection just down the road from me.

Photo of the weekend was the one taken at the Altar "Their Name Liveth For Ever More" taken at Gommecourt Wood Cemetery, the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting of the whole Somme campaign, when many of the men of the South Staffordshire Regiment and the 46th North Midland Division were cut down in their 1000's, sobering place to visit while reading a passage from the book "A Tommy at Gommecourt" by a man who fought there and survived the garnage.