Cornwall In The First World War

During this month, each weekday I'll be posting a different image showing the story of Cornwall's First World War.

The Duchy’s long coastline, mostly isolated, was felt vulnerable to possible enemy invasion. To help protect exposed and sensitive areas, Volunteer Training Corps contingents were formed in many Cornish towns.

Generally the men of Cornwall's VTC were ineligible for front-line service: old soldiers, essential war workers, members of the clergy.  Among other duties they helped protect national treasures, including precious state papers which had arrived for safe keeping at Bodmin Gaol.

The Corps was a national body, the forerunner of the Second World War Home Guard, and given similar tasks.  Its members wore a red brassard emblazoned with the initials GR (Georgius Rex), which led to unkind nicknames such as ‘Gorgeous Wrecks’ and ‘God’s Rejects. Above is a Cornwall VTC cap badge which has survived from those days. 

My book, 'Cornwall In The First World War', is published by Truran. With 112 pages and 100 images, you'll find it in bookshops across the Duchy. It's also available through Amazon: http://amzn.to/19JbtZm

Cornwall In The First World War

During this month, each weekday I'll be posting a different image showing the story of Cornwall's First World War. 

Here's a young recruit to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Hardly more than a boy and swamped by his new greatcoat, he's having his photograph taken before he leaves for the front.  Did he return?  We don't know, because he's anonymous, but for me this is one of the most poignant images in my collection and underscores the terrible waste of war.

My book, 'Cornwall In The First World War', is published by Truran. With 112 pages and 100 images, you'll find it in bookshops across the Duchy. It's also available through Amazon: http://amzn.to/19JbtZm

Cornwall In The First World War

During this month, each weekday I'll be posting a different image showing the story of Cornwall's First World War. Here's early British submarine A.7, a visitor to Cornwall's naval station HMS Defiance.

Commissioned in 1884, Defiance was formed at Wearde Quay on the River Lynher, near Saltash, built around two wooden naval hulks moored off the northern bank. Defiance was a training station.  Its deadly courses taught wholesale maritime destruction, using some of the most lethal weapons of their day: torpedoes and enormous sea-mines.

Mine-laying practice and recovery drills, using dummy weapons, were generally carried out in Whitsand and Cawsand Bays.  But live mine and torpedo firings even took place on the Lynher itself.  Along the shore Cornish people would gather to watch the explosions, as colossal gouts of water were flung high into the air.

My book, 'Cornwall In The First World War', is published by Truran. With 112 pages and 100 images, you'll find it in bookshops across the Duchy. It's also available through Amazon: http://amzn.to/19JbtZm

Cornwall In The First World War

During this month, each day I'll be posting a different image showing the story of Cornwall's First World War.

Here's Miss Clemence, a young machine-operator with J&F Pool Ltd. During the war the Hayle metalworking concern turned to producing munitions and many of its shop-floor staff were female.

My book, 'Cornwall In The First World War', is published by Truran. With 112 pages and 100 images, you'll find it in bookshops across the Duchy. It's also available through Amazon: http://amzn.to/19JbtZm

Cornwall In The First World War

One hundred years ago today, on 4 August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany. The First World War lasted four terrible years, and affected every town and village in Britain.

At the outbreak thousands of men joined the colours and left their homes, many forever. In Cornwall, naval ships, aircraft, even airships arrived along the coast, to help protect Britain's sea-lanes in a brutal campaign against  Germany's submarines. On the Duchy's home front, Cornish men and women worked tirelessly to support those fighting in ditstant battles overseas.

Here's a Cornish image from 1918. On the hard standing at Royal Naval Air Station Newlyn, an airman tends to a Short 184 seaplane. Between the floats of the aircraft is mounted a depth charge. In the background is a canvas hangar, standard issue of the day.
 
Newlyn was one of four Cornish centres of aero activity during the First World War; the others were at Bude, Mullion and Padstow.  An air base was also built at Tresco on the Isles of Scilly.

During this month, each day I'll be posting a different image showing the story of Cornwall's war.

My book, 'Cornwall In The First World War', is published by Truran. With 112 pages and 100 images, you'll find it in bookshops across the Duchy. It's also available through Amazon: http://amzn.to/19JbtZm

Cornwall In The First World War

Among the Cornishmen who joined up when the First World War broke out was St Austell-born Percival Phillips; later he served with the Royal Flying Corps in Mesopotamia, Persia and Kurdistan.

This image was taken during 1918; Percival sits in the cockpit of his R.E.8 two-seat biplane at Baqubah. ‘PP’ survived the fighting and returned safely home. After a spell as a partner in a St Austell motor garage, in 1924 he formed the barnstorming Cornwall Aviation Company.

My new book, 'Cornwall In The First World War', is published by Truran. With 112 pages and 100 images, you'll find it in bookshops across the Duchy. It's also available on line through Waterstones, with free UK post: http://bit.ly/I47c9p

The C Word: Caravans

Know your enemy

Each Easter, Satan sends caravanners to torment the people of Cornwall. Even on the shortest journey I meet lines of terrible white boxes, choking every bypass and lane west of the Tamar.

You’d think caravanners would squirm with embarrassment and guilt at the enormous traffic tailbacks they cause, humbly move aside to let normal road-users pass. But no: shamelessly, their wretched convoys torture us with snail-like progress.

To tow a caravan, training is not required. You just hitch up your little tin home and lurch off down the road, swaying like a cobra. Caravanners’ towing cars are often dreadful, unsuitably small or old, while the vans have bizarre brand-names: ‘Speedbird’, ‘Carefree’ and stretching things beyond breaking-point, ‘Popular’.

What sort of people are caravanners? Stony-faced old gits whose driving is best described as 'cautious'; they can’t read maps and sat-navs are modern rubbish, so everywhere they dither. Or else it’s poor families of sweaties, crushed into grimy derelict vehicles; if only the parents had tried harder at school, today they could afford a holiday ‘abroad’.

I'll just put the kettle on

Caravanners drive 500 miles from their conurbations to ‘the country’, and park in a turd-strewn field one foot from another caravan. They unload smart-price trashy garden furniture; little plastic fences are put out to mark their territories, like some incontinent mongrel dog. For two weeks caravanners eat from Tupperware containers, sleep on planks and play cards in the rain.  Full marks for resilience; no wonder they’re serene about causing road misery.

I don’t like Top Gear, a TV programme, but it has the right idea with caravans.  Every week, new ways are shown of ridiculing caravanners and destroying their ‘homes-on-wheels’. Normal people who all detest caravans can watch appreciatively as ‘emmet-bins’ are dropped from great heights onto concrete, or thrown in the sea.

Caravanning: it’s like a tow-along house, except it’s shit.  Come on caravanners, why not give it up and take a decent holiday? Give us all a break.

Cornwall In The First World War

Newlyn's seaplane base, 1918: a Short 184 floatplane under power

My new book, 'Cornwall In The First World War', was recently published by Truran. With 112 pages and 100 images, you'll find it in bookshops across the Duchy and on line at Waterstones with free UK post: http://bit.ly/I47c9p 

The First World War affected every Cornish town and village; no-one stayed untouched. At the outbreak in August 1914 thousands joined the colours, while Cornwall soon became a vital part of Britain’s all-consuming war effort. Ships of the Royal Navy, aircraft, even airships arrived to defend the sea lanes off the coastline, in a brutal campaign against marauding German submarines. On the home front, for four gruelling years Cornish men and women worked tirelessly to support those fighting in distant battles overseas.

Today, although a century has passed there’s a strong connection with the First World War, through family histories and community heritage. We don't have to look too far back to find those who joined up, whether frock-coated, flat-capped or long-skirted. Conflict raged on a scale never seen before, and Cornwall would play a crucial role in the struggle.

The First World War's centenary represents a unique moment in history. As well as the military events, the book focuses on the people of that time; it's a glimpse of Cornish life a hundred years ago. I hope it will appeal to everyone interested in Cornwall's past. It's also available on Amazon: http://amzn.to/19JbtZm

Easter: Chocolate Heaven!

I have mixed views on Easter. On the one hand, I dislike any intrusion of religion into my daily life. I see the church – that’s to say, the Christian church in this country - as an idiosyncrasy in an ever more secular society. I'm not the only one.

The British Social Attitudes survey has been asking us about our religious views since 1983. The survey reveals that today, well over half of us aren't at all religious while Christian faiths are fast losing believers. Many British people who retain spiritual beliefs aren't Christians.

I visit churches for weddings and funerals, but really these are parties. When I fill in forms asking for personal religious details, I scrawl 'N/A' and move on. If the church is given airtime to 'speak out' on issues that don't concern it or about which it knows nothing, I shout at the television.

But at least we can all enjoy Britain's annual chocolate egg-fest. Maybe it's a hangover from childhood, but I have a great fondness for the old Easter egg. The satisfying snap as the first piece of shell is broken off; picking through the sweeties inside (to make this interesting, really they have to be different); wrapping the remaining shell in its foil, as we save a fragment for later.

So over the Easter break I'm looking forward to receiving loads of eggs, touch wood. Although if you like to believe it, touching wood didn't do much for Jesus.

St Patrick's Day: Forty Shades of Piss-Up!

St Patrick's Day is nearly with us again.
 
Sales of Guinness skyrocket; around the world, Plastic-Paddy pubs give out shamrocked t-shirts and hats to everyone who manages 20 pints of the old craic-juice. Lá Fhéile Pádraig is an enjoyable ritual, a vigorous mixture of culture, extreme drunkenness and fighting. But there's a deadly ingredient too: music to make your dog howl.

I love Irish traditional music; for years I've played the tunes on my trusty flat-back bouzouki. To listen to at home, I've a collection of beautiful, exciting songs and melodies. 

But what I find utterly toe-curling are the Irish standards, those terrible songs which every Paddy's Night get thrashed to death. 'Irish Rover'. 'Wild Rover'. 'Gypsy Rover'. And the all-time worst, most hated of all: 'Leaving of Liverpool'. 

Why do I dislike them so? Because year after year, on 17 March I've been driven quite mad by hearing them bawled out in bars by sweating pissed people who want to be everyone's friend. Thank God they generally know only half the words.

So this year let's really search our hearts, make an effort and learn some new songs. Come round to my place, I've got the really good stuff.