100 years of tanks Options

[Turin Machine]

Howdy folks! If any of you good people are looking for a day out this year get you down to Bovington tank museum where there is a superb exhibition to mark the centenary of the tank. It really, really is worth the time and effort. Stand and stare in awe at some of the incredible machines in which young men fought and died trying to stem the German tide in the trenches of WW1. Great day out and if you do it right catch a tank day when they trundle some of these beasts out, or, even better, go on a Tiger day!

[spartacus]

Went to Tankfest last year... great day out as it's the weekend they get the armour moving around rather than static displays. It's not just a day for military geeks, it's a real family day out. It's on again in 25-26 June but tickets are selling fast.






Well that was a random post.......!

[On the edge]

I'm sure it's well worth a visit. How is it managing in the local government cut backs? Presumably Wool Parish Council will be having difficulties?

[x2lls]

Talking of wartime, what are your earliest recollections?

Mine are going to Brighton as a child on steam trains, mid/late 50s.
My grandparents used to take me there to visit relatives every summer.
I remember getting the taxi from Kings Cross to , I think must have been Victoria, and seeing the devastation on the way.
Brighton looked much the same. On the beach, there were ex military amphibious vehicles being used as joyrides to out past the waves. My granddad told me that they were used for D day.
When they came back on shore, you had to be bloody careful not to get squashed. 'elf'n'safety would be catatonic.
And of course the older relatives in my family. My granddad served in WW1 in what is now Iraq, then he did his bit the second time around in the home guard. Dad's army was his favorite tv show.

[On the edge]

For me it's post war memories; fairly frequent childhood trips to London to visit various relatives. The black hulks of the burnt out stations, particularly Blackfriars and Cannon Street. The 'gaps' between the buildings, covered with weeds and general rubbish. Looking back, I suppose we just accepted as normal our teacher Mr Johns, who'd lost a leg. My mate's dad, who'd come back still fighting and so often lost his job and had to 'go away' for months at a time. Most of them didn't talk about it much; a bit like my grandfather, who'd only ever say he drove a Lorry but didn't do any real fighting. According to my Grandmother, that Lorry ended up in Berlin as the surrender was signed and grandfather was flown back because he was injured! We used to play in the pill boxes alongside the river, smelly dank places, but I suspect they are still there. I also had school mates with German sounding names, German mum's or Polish dads, but no one seemed to be concerned in the slightest - it would have been a very different matter had they been Japanese. It was memory of those atrocities that seemed to linger longest in our local veterans at least.

[Turin Machine]

We used to go down to Paignton on a steam train, glorious! All my friends had some sort of wartime souvenir in the garage or garden from live ammo to gas masks, no one seem to get too hung up about it. Granny had her Anderson shelter in the veg patch. Grandfather served in the trenches in WW1 while later served in Lancs in the second. Oh, and I remember the cars and vans which seemed such luxury to us then but were in fact such basic things in reality, all through the eyes of a child.

We lived in the country so we didn't see any of the devastion wrought on the cities but I did get to see some of the shattered men, I remember a cousin getting married and the vicar holding the good book in a steel claw and reading it in braille with the other, apparently someone had chucked a grenade into a slit trench and he had flung himself on it to save the others. The odd thing about it all was I never ever heard any war stories, the men were all a bit reticent to talk about it, to us kids anyway.

The main thing was that things were quieter, we had no TV, we had to go to town to get the accumulater charged up, there was no traffic and the pace of life was softer, gentler somehow and for some reason summers were longer and the sky bluer!

[Turin Machine]

For all you people interested in tanks, warfare or anything big, heavy and mechanical. Win a ride in the famous (or should that be infamous?). Tiger 131. Chance of a lifetime! See below.

http://tankmuseum.org/year-news/bovnews53533