A very long shot, but…………………………

Many thanks to Jo for contacting me about a photograph that came into her possession. She knows nothing about the individual in the photograph and the only extra information available is that it was taken at some point by the Paramount Studios in Winnipeg, Canada.

As with all of these things, it’s an incredibly long-shot, but if anyone knows or has a suggestion as to who this individual might be, please get in touch, Jo is keen to return it to a family if it is possible.

Please everybody, share this as much as you can and lets see if we can achieve the impossible!

The Evans crew – and a bit of a mystery………

I t was lovely to meet up with Kevin two Sundays ago for the November Remembrance Ceremony at Mepal. Kevin mentioned that he had received a photograph from a lady, who had found it in the processions of her late mother. Her assumption was that her mother had perhaps been a pen-pal to the crew pictured in the photograph.

At the time, I was slightly confused by Kevin’s comment that I didn’t have anything on the crew, but when I got back home, I realised a slight faux-pas on my part, I had accidentally overlooked actually adding the history to the crew page!

Referring to the Squadron database, I suddenly became very confused. The Evans crew were returned as flying 5 Ops with the Squadron, their first being a gardening sortie to the Frisian Islands on the 16th of December 1943, their last on the 15th of February 1944, again mining, this time to Kiel, (Roy Evans flying as 2nd Pilot with Osric White on the 18th of November to Mannheim).

Imagine my surprise when looking at the scan of the back of the crew photograph:

Clearly there is a slight discrepancy in totals. One might summise that the crew had already been posted elsewhere, however, all seem to have come to Mepal straight from 1657 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Stradishall.

I would be fascinated to hear from anybody who might have anymore information on the Evans crew, or any of its members and their 27 Ops completed…………

For the Fallen – Lest we forget

Poem by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21 September 1914.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Laurence Binyon composed his best known poem while sitting on the cliff-top looking out to sea from the dramatic scenery of the north Cornish coastline. A plaque marks the location at Pentire Point, north of Polzeath. However, there is also a small plaque on the East Cliff north of Portreath, further south on the same north Cornwall coast, which also claims to be the place where the poem was written.

The poem was written in mid September 1914, a few weeks after the outbreak of the First World War. During these weeks the British Expeditionary Force had suffered casualties following its first encounter with the Imperial German Army at the Battle of Mons on 23 August, its rearguard action during the retreat from Mons in late August and the Battle of Le Cateau on 26 August, and its participation with the French Army in holding up the Imperial German Army at the First Battle of the Marne between 5 and 9 September 1914.

Laurence said in 1939 that the four lines of the fourth stanza came to him first. These words of the fourth stanza have become especially familiar and famous, having been adopted by the Royal British Legion as an Exhortation for ceremonies of Remembrance to commemorate fallen Servicemen and women.

Laurence Binyon was too old to enlist in the military forces but he went to work for the Red Cross as a medical orderly in 1916. He lost several close friends and his brother-in-law in the war.