Travel to Thailand with Sophie’s Great war Tours

Visiting Thailand has long been a dream of mine, and I finally got to fullfil that in March 2024.

When most people think of Thailand, images of turquoise waters, golden temples, and vibrant night markets instantly come to mind. It’s a country that promises postcard-perfect beaches, mouthwatering cuisine, and a deep sense of spirituality. But beyond the stunning scenery and lively culture, Thailand also holds powerful stories from its complex past, none more haunting than the infamous Burma Railway of the Second World War.

Whether you’re seeking relaxation, adventure, culture, or historical reflection, Thailand offers a travel experience unlike any other. Here’s why Thailand deserves a top spot on your travel bucket list.

1. A Tropical Escape: Beaches, Resorts, and Relaxation

Thailand’s southern coastline is a dreamscape of white sands and crystal-clear waters. One standout destination is Aleenta Phuket, a boutique luxury resort that embodies barefoot elegance and personal service. Whether you’re lounging by your private pool, indulging in a beachfront spa, or enjoying farm-to-table dining, Aleenta is the perfect place to decompress after a long flight, or before embarking on more adventurous travels.

With nearby islands like Phi Phi, Similan, and James Bond Island just a boat ride away, this part of Thailand is a magnet for beach lovers and water sports enthusiasts alike.

Get in touch if you're thinking about your next escape, we have access to some exclusive special offers including complimentary half board.

2. City Lights and Cultural Delights: Bangkok

After some well-earned beach time, many travelers head north to Bangkok, a city where tradition and modernity dance side by side. Here, glittering skyscrapers overlook ancient temples like Wat Arun and the Grand Palace. A boat ride through the Chao Phraya River reveals hidden corners of the old city, while bustling markets offer everything from street food feasts to handmade crafts.

3. A Journey Through History: The Burma Railway

No journey to Thailand is complete without acknowledging the country’s profound Second World War history. Known as the Death Railway, the Burma Railway was built under harrowing conditions by Allied prisoners of war and forced laborers, linking Thailand to Burma (now Myanmar).

Today, you can visit Kanchanaburi, the province where much of the railway was constructed. Walk across the Bridge on the River Kwai, made famous by the novel and movie of the same name, and explore the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum, a moving tribute to the thousands who lost their lives during the railway’s construction.

It’s a deeply emotional experience, contrasting starkly with the paradise landscapes.

Get in touch today and let our experts plan your trip to this fascinating and welcoming country.

OTD in 1770 - Boston Massacre

OTD in 1770, the Boston Massacre unfolds. What started as a street brawl on King Street, Boston escalated when a lone British soldier opened fire & chaos ensued. It inflamed anti-British sentiment & paved the way for the American Revolution.

Private Hugh White was the only soldier guarding the King’s money stored inside the Custom House on King Street. It wasn’t long before angry colonists joined him and insulted him and threatened violence. Reports of what happened next remain unclear but the story goes that White fought back and struck a colonist with his bayonet. In retaliation, the colonists pelted him with snowballs, ice and stones. Bells started ringing throughout the town—usually a warning of fire—sending a mass of male colonists into the streets. As the assault on White continued, he eventually fell and called for reinforcements.

Reinforcements arrived creating a defensive position in front of the Custom House.

Violence escalated, and the colonists struck the soldiers with clubs and sticks. Someone reportedly said “fire.”. Once the first shot rang out, other soldiers opened fire, killing five and wounding six.

For anyone wanting to immerse themselves in this hugely important period of history, we heartily recommend staying at The Inn At Hastings Park, Lexington.

Perfectly nestled in Lexington, Massachusetts, just 15 miles outside Boston, the Inn at Hastings Park provides unrivaled hospitality and exceptional culinary experiences. The Boston area’s only Relais & Châteaux property, the Inn features stylishly luxurious accommodations that celebrate Lexington’s historic heritage with a contemporary American aesthetic. Come and enjoy an immersive food and wine destination unlike any other in New England.

Contact Sophie’s Great War Tours for special rates: sophie@sophiesgreatwartours.com

Prestigious Award Win for SGWT - Second Year Running

I'm delighted to announce that for a second year running, Sophie's Great War Tours has been named, 'Military Heritage Tourism Operator of the Year 2025 - Europe'.

Judges pointed to the extensive expertise within our sector, dedication to customer service and client satisfaction with an ongoing commitment to excellence and innovation.

None of this would be possible without my excellent team. A big thank you to all those amazing guides that work tirelessly for our customers, and to Tracy in operations.

As an IC with the brilliant Simplexity Travel Management Ltd - all of our customers are financially protected, have access to 24/7 support while away and can access some of the best travel products globally.

If we can help you with your travel plans this year, please do drop me a message.

Advent Calendar - Day 24 - Fabian Ware

Our last advent post is very pertinent for us guides. It’s a man that we engage with every day of the job and indeed a man most people will interact with in some way every week.

Today we look at Fabian Ware.

Major-General Sir Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware was the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).

Fabian was born in Bristol on 17 June 1869 to Charles and Amy. He was to graduate from the University of Paris with a Bachelor of Science and go on to teach in schools across the UK. He married Anna and they had two children together.

He would go onto have an influential career in education in South Africa and also as newspaper Editor back in the UK, but for today we focus on his work during the Great War.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Fabian tried to join the British Army but was rejected on the grounds of being too old at 45 years old. Determined to do something with his skills and for his country, he gained an appointment as the commander of a mobile ambulance unit provided by the British Red Cross Society. When on the Western Front, he was struck by the lack of an official mechanism for managing the graves of those killed. He saw the dead and dying and realised that these soldiers needed to be documented in some way, so that permanent records and graves could be established.

Ware met with the Adjutant-General to the Forces, Nevil Macready in mid-February 1915 to discuss the future of his units work. With the support of Macready, the British Army formally recognised a Grave Registration Commission (GRC) on 2nd March 1915. The GRC's work would map and record the names and locations of burials. By May 1915, 4,300 graves had been registered and by August, the number was 18,173.

Fabian’s role naturally led him to become something of a negotiator and intermediary between military and civil forces both in France and Britain. He would work on negotiations attempting to resolve areas of disagreement between the two nations, particularly that of land expropriation for the cemeteries. The negotiations resulted in an "expropriation bill" which was presented to the French Chamber of Deputies in July. Ware shepherded the bill through its passage, urging prominent British figures such as the adjutant-general and King George V to support it. By May 1916, the GRC had selected 200 sites for cemeteries. The law was passed by the French government on 29 December 1917. It gave Britain the ability to control their war graves in "perpetuity of sepulture" and provided for the establishment of a British authority to manage the cemeteries.

When Will Gladstone MP the grandson of former Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, was killed in action on 13 April 1915, his family attempted to have the body exhumed and returned to England. Despite a ban on exhumations established by French General Joseph, his family received special permission to take the body and bury it in Hawarden, Wales. Ware saw this as an establishment of a two tier system - one for those with influence and money and not something your average soldier’s family could partake in. In response, Ware pushed for a ban on future exhumations. This policy would cause deep divisions amongst the British public, but with the benefit hindsight, I believe it was absolutely the right decision.

The GRC was formally integrated into the Army in May 1916 as the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries (DGRE). Representatives from across the dominions of the Empire were members. Ware moved to London to continue the running of the organisation, eventually employing 700 people! The DGRE had expanded to include an Italian and an Eastern section; the latter included Salonika, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.

As Ware's work with graves continued, discussion about a "double identity disc" (previously there was only one per soldier) began. Ware wrote Macready on 21 June 1915; in the letter he included a sketch of a pair of discs made of compressed fibre – one could be removed and the other left with the corpse. On 24 June his proposal was accepted and four million were ordered. Discs began arriving in large numbers in mid-November. Such discs were issued to soldiers throughout the rest of the First and Second World War.

While director, Ware was made a temporary brigadier-general on 12 August 1916. The DGRE regulated graves, from the space between grave markers, to the way in which they were to look. He attempted to resolve differences between soldiers of different religious affiliations, decreeing for instance:

"On no account should [Egyptian] Mohammedans be buried in Christian consecrated ground, Jewish graves were to be marked with a double triangle on a stake [and] under no circumstances should a cross be erected over an Indian Grave."

Efforts to neaten the cemeteries had begun in early 1916 when Ware invited Arthur William Hill, assistant director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to tour the cemeteries and advise upon further planting efforts. Hill visited 37 cemeteries and wrote a report on how to plant them. This is precisely why so many visitors remark upon how beautiful the cemeteries are today - so much thought was put in at the very beginning.

By April 1917 the DGRE had registered over 156,500 graves; at least 150,000 in France and Belgium, 2,500 in Salonika and 4,000 in Egypt.

On 21 May 1917 the Imperial War Graves Commission was established by royal charter, with the Prince of Wales serving as president and Secretary of State for War Lord Derby as chairman.

In June 1917 Ware proposed a £10 budget per grave (equivalent to £708 in 2023 terms), which became the standard sum for the IWGC. On 9 July a committee organised by Ware, consisting of the Director of the Tate, Charles Aitken, the author J. M. Barrie, and the architects Lutyens and Herbert Baker, toured the cemeteries in order to form a plan for the post-war activities of the commission. The committee met on 14 July and decided all cemeteries should have a general theme. They agreed there would be four variations on the theme: monumental, garden or woodland, village, and town cemeteries.

Upon Ware's invitation, author Rudyard Kipling was appointed the commission's literary adviser in October 1917. On 22 November Ware formally announced that there would be no difference "between officers and men lying in the same cemeteries in the form or nature of the memorials". In 1918, Edward Lutyens, Baker, and Reginald Blomfield were appointed the commission's principal architects. By April 1920, there had been 128,577 re-interments in France and Belgium and the IWGC was managing 788 cemeteries.

Ware fought hard for the Treasury to commit to an endowment fund to permanently look after national monuments which was secured in 1932.

Second World War

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Ware was recalled to serve as director-general of Graves Registration and Enquiries at the War Office on 30 August 1939. In Autumn 1940 Ware began working on a programme to memorialise civilian dead as a result of the war. Despite support from the King and Registrar General, the Commission struggled to record all information—particularly the addresses of next of kin. After Ware toured some of the areas with the most deaths, local authorities were enlisted to help. By releasing various announcements and a radio broadcast by Ware in November, the IWGC had collected information on more than 18,000 people.

Ware died on 28 April 1949 in Barnwood House Hospital, Gloucester, and was buried in Holy Trinity Churchyard, Amberley on 2nd May. His grave has an IWGC-style headstone. There are memorial tablets to him in St George's Chapel at Westminster Abbey and in Gloucester Cathedral.

Legacy

The length of this post tell us something of the man, his dedicated to the task of ensuring men would never be forgotten. We could go on in much greater depth, but let’s reflect now on why Ware is so important to us today.

Without Ware's vision and leadership, the standardised and dignified commemoration of war dead might not exist. There could have been scattered, inconsistent burial practices, leaving soldiers' graves unmarked or poorly maintained. Families might have struggled to locate or visit the final resting places of their loved ones. Today, we will walk past village cemeteries, see monuments with hundreds of names, drive past military cemeteries in France, Belgium and further afield of course, and that is all down to the idea and drive of one man. His principles of equality, that all war dead regardless of rank, nationality, or social background, deserved the same level of care and commemoration are truly moving when you enter a CWGC.

Thank you Fabian.

Advent Calendar - Day 23 - Queen Elizabeth II

When I think of the word service, there is one person that shoots to the front of my mind, Queen Elizabeth II.

Queen Elizabeth II, reigned for an extraordinary 70 years from 1952 until her death in 2022. Her reign was marked by significant historical, cultural, and societal changes, and she played a pivotal role in shaping modern monarchy. She became a symbol of continuity and stability through all of this change.

As Head of State, Queen Elizabeth II met with more than a hundred world leaders, including 13 U.S. Presidents and numerous other heads of state. Her diplomacy, often understated but impactful, helped maintain the UK's global influence. Her soft power was a vital tool in forging international relationships.

Her unwavering sense of duty and commitment to public service was a cornerstone of her legacy. From a young age, she famously pledged to devote her life to service, a promise she fulfilled across her seven-decade reign. This work ethic earned her respect and admiration worldwide.

Wartime Role

On 13th September 1940, just six days after the Blitz began, five high explosive bombs were dropped on Buckingham Palace. The Royal Chapel, inner quadrangle and Palace gates were hit, and several workmen were injured. Rather than flee the city under attack, King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth, remained at Buckingham Palace. This was a hugely successful move for British propaganda.

Princess Elizabeth was just 13 years old when war was declared. Like many children living in London, Elizabeth and her sister, Princess Margaret were evacuated to avoid the dangers of bombing raids. The two girls were sent to Windsor Castle.

On 13th October 1940 Princess Elizabeth gave her first address from the drawing room of Windsor Castle as part of the BBC’s Children’s Hour in an attempt to boost public morale. She spoke directly to the children who had been separated from their families as part of the evacuation scheme.

“Thousands of you in this country have had to leave your homes and be separated from your fathers and mothers. My sister Margaret Rose and I feel so much for you, as we know from experience what it means to be away from those you love most of all. To you living in new surroundings, we send a message of true sympathy and at the same time we would like to thank the kind people who have welcomed you to their homes in the country.”

As the war continued, Princess Elizabeth was asked to play more a role in promoting both resilience to the situations the country was facing, and supporting public campaigns such as “Dig for Victory”.

On the morning of her sixteenth birthday, Princess Elizabeth undertook her first inspection of a military regiment during a parade at Windsor Castle. She had been given the role of honorary colonel of the Grenadier Guards. When Princess Elizabeth turned 18 in 1944, she insisted upon joining the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women’s branch of the British Army. King George made sure that his daughter was not given a promoted rank so she started as a second subaltern , later being promoted to Junior Commander, the equivalent of Captain.

Princess Elizabeth began her training as a mechanic in March 1945. She undertook a driving and vehicle maintenance course at Aldershot, qualifying on April 14. Newspapers at the time dubbed her “Princess Auto Mechanic.”

On 8th May 1945, the war in Europe ended. In London, thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate, flooding Trafalgar Square and the Mall leading up to Buckingham Palace where the King and Queen greeted them from the balcony. Princess Elizabeth and her sister were desperate to soak up some of this atmosphere, so perhaps for the only time in her life, Elizabeth slipped into the crowd, her uniform cap pulled well down over her eyes. She described the “lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall, and all of us were swept along by tides of happiness and relief.” There are even reports that the princesses joined a conga dance through the Ritz Hotel as they celebrated with the crowds. “I think it was one of the most memorable nights of my life.” she recalled.

Queen Elizabeth II’s legacy is that of a monarch who dedicated her life to her people, adapted the institution to the modern age, and became a beloved figure both at home and abroad. Her impact will be remembered not only in the history books but also in the hearts of those who lived during her remarkable reign. Her wartime work symbolises her dedication to public service and remains a celebrated part of her legacy.

Advent Calendar - Day 22 - Simon Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor and arguably the most famous of Nazi hunters. He worked tirelessly to bring those to justice that had escaped it just after the Second World War. He said,

“when history looks back, I want people to know the Nazis weren’t able to kill millions of people and get away with it."

Simon was born on 31st December 1908, in Buczacz (Buchach), Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, then part of Austria-Hungary, now Ternopil Oblast, in Ukraine. His father, Asher Wiesenthal, was a wholesaler who had emigrated from the Russian Empire in 1905 to escape the frequent pogroms against Jews. A reservist in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Asher was called to active duty in 1914 at the start of the First World War. He died in combat on the Eastern Front in 1915. Simon, his younger brother Hillel, and his mother Rosa fled to Vienna as the Russian army took control of Galicia. The two boys attended a German-language Jewish school. The family returned to Buczacz in 1917 after the Russians retreated. The area changed hands several more times before the war ended in November 1918.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, the city of Lwów was annexed by the Soviets and became known as Lvov in Russian or Lviv in Ukrainian. Wiesenthal's stepfather, still living in Dolyna, was arrested as a capitalist; he later died in a Soviet prison. Wiesenthal's mother moved to Lvov to live with Wiesenthal and his wife. Wiesenthal bribed an official to prevent his own deportation under Clause 11, a rule that prevented all Jewish professionals and intellectuals from living within 100 kilometres (62 mi) of the city, which was under Soviet occupation until the Germans invaded in June 1941.

By mid-July Wiesenthal and other Jewish residents had to register to do forced labour. Within six months, in November 1941 the Nazis had set up the Lwów Ghetto using Jewish forced labour. All Jews had to give up their homes and move there, a process completed in the following months. Several thousand Jews were murdered in Lvov by Ukrainian nationals and German Einsatzgruppen in June and July 1941.

In late 1941, Wiesenthal and his wife were transferred to Janowska concentration camp and forced to work at the Eastern Railway Repair Works. He painted swastikas and other inscriptions on captured Soviet railway engines, and Cyla was put to work polishing the brass and nickel. In exchange for providing details about the railways, Wiesenthal obtained false identity papers for his wife from a member of the Armia Krajowa, a Polish underground organisation. She travelled to Warsaw, where she was put to work in a German radio factory. She spent time in two labour camps as well. Conditions were harsh and her health was permanently damaged, but she survived the war. The couple was reunited in 1945, and their daughter Paulinka was born the following year.

Every few weeks, the Nazis staged a roundup in the Lvov ghetto of people unable to work. These roundups typically took place while the able-bodied were absent doing forced labour. In one such deportation, Wiesenthal's mother and other elderly Jewish women were transported by freight train to Belzec extermination camp and murdered in August 1942. Around the same time, a Ukrainian policeman shot Cyla's mother to death on the front porch of her home in Buczacz while she was being evicted. Between Cyla and Simon, 89 of their relatives were murdered during the Holocaust.

Forced labourers for the Eastern Railway were eventually kept in a separate closed camp, where conditions were a little better than at the main camp at Janowska. Wiesenthal prepared architectural drawings for Adolf Kohlrautz, the senior inspector, who submitted them under his own name. To obtain contracts, construction companies paid bribes to Kohlrautz, who shared some of the money with Wiesenthal. He was able to pass along further information about the railroads to the underground and occasionally left the compound to obtain supplies, even clandestinely obtaining weapons for the Armia Krajowa and two pistols for himself, which he brought with him when he escaped in late 1943.

According to Wiesenthal, on 20 April 1943, Second Lieutenant Gustav Wilhaus, second in command at the Janowska camp, decided to shoot 54 Jewish intellectuals in celebration of Hitler's 54th birthday. Unable to find enough such people still alive at Janowska, Wilhaus ordered a roundup of prisoners from the satellite camps. Wiesenthal and two other inmates were taken from the Eastern Railway camp to the execution site, a trench 6 feet (1.8 m) deep and 1,500 feet (460 m) long at a nearby sandpit. The men were stripped and led through "the Hose", a six- or seven-foot wide barbed wire corridor to the execution ground. The victims were shot and their bodies allowed to fall into the pit. Wiesenthal, waiting to be shot, heard someone call out his name. He was returned alive to the camp; Kohlrautz had convinced his superiors that Wiesenthal was the best man available to paint a giant poster in honour of Hitler's birthday.

On 2nd October 1943, according to Wiesenthal, Kohlrautz warned him that the camp and its prisoners were about to be liquidated. Kohlrautz gave Wiesenthal and fellow prisoner Arthur Scheiman passes to go to town, accompanied by a Ukrainian guard, to buy stationery. The two men escaped out the back of the shop while their guard waited at the front counter.

After several days in hiding, Scheiman rejoined his wife, and Wiesenthal was taken by members of the underground to the nearby village of Kulparkow, where he remained until the end of 1943. Soon afterwards the Janowska camp was liquidated; this made it unsafe to hide in the nearby countryside, so Wiesenthal returned to Lvov, where he spent three days hiding in a closet at the Scheimans' apartment. He then moved to the apartment of Paulina Busch, for whom he had previously forged an identity card. He was arrested there, hiding under the floorboards, on 13 June 1944 and taken back to the remains of the camp at Janowska. Wiesenthal tried but failed to commit suicide to avoid being interrogated about his connections with the underground. In the end there was no time for interrogations, as Soviet forces were advancing into the area. SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Warzok, the new camp commandant, rounded up the remaining prisoners and transported them to Przemyśl, 97 kilometres (60 mi) west of Lvov, where he put them to work building fortifications. By September Warzok and his men were reassigned to the front, and Wiesenthal and the other surviving captives were sent to the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp.

By October the inmates were evacuated to Gross-Rosen concentration camp, where inmates were suffering from severe overcrowding and a shortage of food. Wiesenthal's big toe on his right foot had to be amputated after a rock fell on it while he was working in the quarry. He was still ill in January when the advancing Soviets forced yet another evacuation, this time on foot, to Chemnitz. Using a broom handle for a walking stick, he was one of the few who survived the march. From Chemnitz, the prisoners were taken in open freight cars to Buchenwald, and a few days later by truck to Mauthausen concentration camp, arriving in mid-February 1945. Over half the prisoners did not survive the journey. Wiesenthal was placed in a death block for the mortally ill, where he survived on 200 calories a day until the camp was liberated by the Americans on 5th May 1945. He weighed 41 kilograms (90 lb) when he was liberated.

Within three weeks of the liberation of Mauthausen, Simon had prepared a list of around a hundred names of suspected Nazi war criminals, camp guards, commandants, and Gestapo members. He presented it to the American Counterintelligence Corps at Mauthausen. He worked as an interpreter, accompanying officers who were carrying out arrests, though he was still very frail. When Austria was partitioned in July 1945, Mauthausen fell into the Soviet-occupied zone, so the American War Crimes Office was moved to Linz. Wiesenthal went with them, and was housed in a displaced persons camp. He served as vice-chairman of the area's Jewish Central Committee, an organisation that attempted to arrange basic care for Jewish refugees and tried to help people gather information about their missing family members.

Simon worked for the American Office of Strategic Services for a year, and continued to collect information on both victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust. He assisted the Bricha, an underground organisation that smuggled Jewish survivors into the British Mandate for Palestine. He helped arrange for forged papers, food supplies, transportation, and so on. In February 1947, he and 30 other volunteers founded the Jewish Documentation Center in Linz to gather information for future war crimes trials. They collected 3,289 depositions from concentration camp survivors still living in Europe. However, as the US and the Soviet Union lost interest in conducting further trials, a similar group headed by Tuviah Friedman in Vienna closed its office in 1952, and Wiesenthal's closed in 1954. Wiesenthal, employed full-time by two Jewish welfare agencies, continued his work with refugees. As it became clear that the former Allies were no longer interested in pursuing the work of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice, Wiesenthal persisted, believing the survivors were obliged to take on the task.

Though most of the Jews still alive in Linz had emigrated after the war, Wiesenthal decided to stay on, partly because the family of Adolf Eichmann (one of the Holocaust’s main architect’s lived just down the road). Eventually Eichmann was captured in South America and sentenced to death.

As the decades rolled on and time passed, Simon’s services became less of interest. He was enrolled as a Mossad operative, maintaining the records of hundreds of Nazis at large.

Known as "the Mare of Majdanek", Hermine Braunsteiner was a guard who served at Majdanek and Ravensbrück concentration camps. A cruel and sadistic woman, she earned her nickname for her propensity to kick her victims to death. She served a three-year sentence in Austria for her activities in Ravensbrück, but had not yet been charged for any of her crimes at Majdanek when she emigrated to the United States in 1959. She became an American citizen in 1963. Simon was first told about Braunsteiner in early 1964 via a chance encounter in Tel Aviv with someone who had seen her performing selections at Majdanek, deciding who was to be assigned to slave labour and who was to murdered immediately in the gas chambers. When he returned to Vienna he had an operative visit one of her relatives to clandestinely collect information. Wiesenthal soon traced Braunsteiner's whereabouts to Queens, New York, so he notified the Israeli police and the New York Times. Simon tried hard to have her extradited to Germany but this did not happen until 1973. Her trial was part of a joint indictment with nine other defendants accused of killing 250,000 people at Majdanek. She was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1981, was released on health grounds in 1996, and died in 1999.

Wiesenthal received many death threats over the years. After a bomb placed by neo-Nazis exploded outside his house in Vienna on 11 June 1982, police guards were stationed outside his home 24 hours a day.

Simon would ultimately spend his entire life searching for Nazi soldiers that were involved in the Holocaust. He finally retired at the age of 92. Wiesenthal died on 20 September 2005, age 96. He was buried in Herzliya, Israel.

Conclusion

Wiesenthal’s is credited with tracking down over 1,100 Nazi war criminals. He relentlessly pursued justice, shaped how the world addresses crimes against humanity and preserves the memory of genocide. His work is a reminder of the need to remain vigilant against hatred and to seek accountability for injustices.

Advent Calendar - Day 21 - Arthur Currie

General Sir Arthur William Currie will go down in history as one of the Great War’s most capable leaders.

He had the unique distinction of starting his military career on the very bottom rung as a pre-war militia gunner before rising through the ranks to become the first Canadian commander of the Canadian Corps.

Arthur Currie was born on 5th December 1875 to William Garner Curry and Jane Patterson on their farm near the hamlet of Napperton, Ontario, Canada. He was the third of eight children and they grew up on the homestead of his paternal grandparents, John Corrigan and Jane Garner. Currie's grandparents had emigrated from Ireland in 1838 to escape religious strife, and upon their arrival in Canada they had converted from Catholicism and Anglicanism to Methodism, changing the family name from Corrigan to Curry. Arthur Currie modified the spelling of his surname from Curry to Currie in 1897.

Arthur would go on to train and qualify as a teacher.

On 6th May 1897, Currie joined the Canadian Militia as a part-time gunner for the 5th (British Columbia) Field Artillery Regiment. He achieved the rank of Corporal in 1900 and was soon after offered an officer's commission. A commission however, was a expensive prospect as officers were expected to provide their own uniforms and to donate their pay to the officer's mess. This was a fact that would plague Arthur for many years to come, resulting a big financial scandal that would follow him to the trenches. Currie was discouraged by his financial prospects as a teacher; and thus left teaching to take up work in insurance.

Currie took on his role as militia officer seriously, studying textbooks, getting to the firing range and attending any workshop offered.

By September 1909, he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, commanding the 5th Regiment. In August 1913, Currie's five-year term as commander of the 5th Regiment came to a close and he faced a forced retirement from the Canadian Militia at the age of 38. Just in time, he was approached to take command of a new militia regiment, the 50th Regiment Gordon Highlanders of Canada.

At the outbreak of war, Arthur was promoted to Brigadier-General and he took command of the 2nd Brigade, sailing to the UK with them in October 1914. After training in the UK, they arrived in Ypres in April 1915 in time to take part in the Second Battle of Ypres where the Germans used gas on masse for the first time on the Western Front. Currie stayed cool under pressure and organised 2nd Brigade’s vital defence of Ypres.

The following year, the Canadians moved over to the Somme sector shortly after the opening of the batte. Arthur proved himself to be the master of the set-piece assault, designed to take limited objectives and then hold on in the face of inevitable German counterattacks.

By late 1916, the four Canadian divisions were in France, gathered together as the Canadian Corps under the command of Sir Julian Byng. This Corps was to play a big role in the next planned offensive at Arras, and Currie was tasked with analysing the Somme battles in order to plan for Arras. He attended lectures, spoke with senior and junior officers, questioned them for their experiences and ideas, and in turn gave a series of lectures on his findings.

In response to the Verdun visit, organisational changes were made to the platoon structure within the infantry battalions that would later become corps-wide changes. In his report, Currie evaluated not only the French tactics but also what the Canadians had done wrong in the fighting on the Somme. Currie summarized the primary factors behind successful French offensive operations as: careful staff work, thorough artillery preparation and support, the element of surprise, and a high state of training in the infantry units detailed for the assault.

Currie, in command of the 1st Canadian Division, was responsible for the broad southern sector of the Canadian Corps advance and expected to make the greatest advance in terms of distance. The attack was to begin at 5:30 am on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917. By the end of the first day, the 1st Canadian Division had captured all of its first line objectives and the left half of its second line. The next morning by 9:30 am, fresh troops had leap-frogged existing battalions to advance to the third objective line. To permit the troops time to consolidate the third line, the advance halted and the barrage remained stationary for ninety minutes while machine guns were brought forward. Shortly before 1:00 pm, the advance recommenced and, by 2:00 pm, the 1st Canadian Division secured their final objective.

When Byng was promoted to general in command of the British Third Army in June 1917, Currie was raised to the temporary rank of Lieutenant-General on 9 June, and given command of the entire Canadian Corps. He was called into action for the Battle of Hill 70, which General Haig called one of the finest minor operations of the war.

The Canadian Corps was then transferred from Lens to Ypres to take part in the Battle of Passchendaele. Currie was tasked with continuing the advance started by the now exhausted II Anzac Corps in order to ultimately capture Passchendaele village and gain favourable observation positions and drier winter positions. Rather than one mass assault, Currie designed a series of well-prepared, sharp attacks that allowed the Corps to take an objective and then hold it against the inevitable German counterattacks. By 30th October, the Canadians, aided by two British divisions, gained the outskirts of the village in a driving rainstorm, and then held on for five days against intense shelling and counter-attacks, often standing waist deep in mud as they fought. The Canadians' victory came at the cost of 15,654 casualties, including 4,028 killed.

The final year of the war would send further tests and achievements the way of the Canadians. On each occasion, though losses were not trivial in number, Currie’s meticulous plans allowed for great gains over tricky terrain, including The Battle of Canal du Nord, a brilliantly executed operation that used an unexpected point of attack to achieve a breakthrough.

After the war, Currie was appointed Inspector General of the Armed Forces and was then promoted to full general on 10 December, the highest ranking position in the Canadian forces. Currie intended to use the position to reform the military. However, in the post-war period, military funding was cut and Currie encountered significant opposition from the military bureaucracy to organizational changes. Deeply unhappy, Currie retired from the military, and in May 1920 accepted the position of principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University in Montreal.

Currie suffered two strokes and died on 30th November 1933 at the age of 57 at Royal Victoria Hospital from bronchial complications brought on by pneumonia. His civilian and military funeral on 5 December was held in Montreal and was the largest to that point in Canadian history.

Conclusion

Currie was a meticulous planner who prioritised preparation and detail. He continually adapted tactics to the realities of trench warfare, and integrated artillery, infantry, and engineering units in coordinated assaults, laying the groundwork for combined arms tactics. Currie understood the importance of empowering junior officers and soldiers, promoting a culture where everyone understood their role in the mission. This decentralised approach allowed Canadian units to maintain momentum even under difficult circumstances, a major factor in their battlefield success.

Currie's success wasn’t just tactical—it reshaped Canada's national identity. His leadership during the war elevated Canada’s status on the world stage, proving the effectiveness of Canadian troops and contributing to the country’s post-war independence from British control.

Follow the Canadian Corps on the Western Front

Sophie’s Great War Tours have a number of Canadian Corps experts. If you would like to follow in their footsteps, understand their missions and successes, we’d love to show you.

Advent Calendar - Day 20 - Albert Gill

Sergeant Albert Gill is a Victoria Cross recipient. His actions clearly mark him out as someone that served and saved, thus making the SGWT advent calendar.

Albert was born in Birmingham on 8 September 1879. He joined the Army soon after leaving school and was posted to India with the Kings Royal Rifle Corps. He served his full time with the colours and upon finishing his service was placed on the reserve.

After leaving the Army Albert followed his father and brother into employment as a tube drawer (a metalworker who made metal tubes) with Earle, Bourne and Co Ltd of Heath Street (later Delta Metals) which at the time specialised in making bed frames.  He spent six years with the company and it is reported that he began work with the General Post Office around 1907 sorting the mail at the head Post Office in Birmingham.

When war was declared, Albert was recalled to the colours with the 1st Battalion, Kings Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC).  The Battalion was under the command of 6th Brigade in the 2nd Division. Albert would land in France on 13th August 1914 and he would see action throughout 1915.

It was on the Somme that Albert was to perform an act of heroism that would claim his life and preserve his name forever.

On the morning of 27th July 1916, the 1st Battalion KRRC were to attack with the 23rd Royal Fusiliers on their left.  They advanced as the artillery bombardment lifted to the next line of attack but the advance was hampered by the undergrowth and rifle fire from the German trenches.  The first objective, known as Princes Street trench was taken with few casualties and Albert was in the supporting company who passed through the first wave of attackers and on to the edge of the wood.  ‘A’ Company, to which Albert belonged, had suffered a high number of casualties including all of their bombing section, the name given to teams specially trained in the use of hand grenades.  At around 9.00am the Germans launched a counter attack and managed to pin down the British troops in the wood.  The undergrowth aided the snipers and there was a distinct possibility that a gap which had developed between the KRRC and the 23rd Royal Fusiliers would lead to the Battalion being cut off. It was at this time that the actions of Gill were to result in his death.  He organised his men into bombing parties and then, as the location of the enemy snipers was unknown, he stood up to draw their fire so that he could direct the fire of his men to the enemy.  Albert was hit almost immediately but his actions ensured that the German counter attack was repulsed and Delville Wood was taken later that day.  At the end of the battle the KRRC had suffered 14 officers and 308 other ranks killed or wounded.

On 10th August 1916, Albert’s Company Commander, Captain Stafford wrote to Albert’s wife and expressed:

‘Your husband was shot through the head and must have died at once.  He would have known nothing about it.  He was one of the most valued men in my company, a man whom anyone would be proud to call friend.  He was loved by his platoon, of which I am sorry to say only four or five men remain.  You should be justly proud of your husband in his life and death.  He had one of the finest natures I have ever known.  No words of mine can express my sympathy with you in your terrible sorrow.

The London Gazette proclaimed Albert’s VC citation as follows:

For most conspicuous bravery.  The enemy made a very strong counter-attack on the right flank of the battalion and rushed the bombing post after killing all the company bombers.  Serjeant Gill at once rallied the remnants of his platoon, none of whom were skilled bombers and reorganised his defences, a most difficult and dangerous task, the trench being very shallow and much damaged.  Soon afterwards the enemy nearly surrounded his men by creeping up through the thick undergrowth and commenced sniping at about twenty yards range.  Although it was almost certain death, Serjeant Gill stood boldly up in order to direct the fire of his men.  He was killed almost at once but not before he had shown his men where the enemy were, and thus enabled them to hold up their advance.  By his supreme devotion to duty and self-sacrifice he saved a very dangerous situation

Albert’s wife journeyed to Buckingham Palace to receive Albert’s VC. In 2000, it was purchased for £60,000 by the Lord Ashcroft Medal Collection and is displayed at the Imperial War Museum.

Visit the Locations

What I love about Albert’s story, is that it is possible to stand on the spot where Albert gathered his men, willing them on and supporting them. You can look into the thick undergrowth and imagine how difficult it was for the men to spot and engage their enemy. You can also imagine this brave man sacrificing himself for his comrades. Just across the way from the wood is Albert’s final resting place.

Walk in Albert’s Footsteps

If you’d like to follow Albert’s journey or indeed any other soldier, contact us today to arrange your own private bespoke tour.

Advent Calendar - Day 19 - Frank Whittle

Air Commodore Sir Frank Whittle was an English engineer, inventor and Royal Air Force officer. He is credited with co-creating the turbojet engine. His work throughout the war would redefine the British aviation industry and all of us alive today benefit from his original ideas and tireless work.

Frank’s story below is technical, scientific and full of internal battles with both private industry and Government departments. I have tried to focus on the key moments of his life.

Frank Whittle was born in Coventry, UK to Moses and Sara. The family moved to Leamington Spa where his father, a highly inventive practical engineer and mechanic, purchased the Leamington Valve and Piston Ring Company. Here a young Whittle got stuck into the equipment and could perform practical experiments.

Frank joined the RAF and reported to RAF Halton in Buckinghamshire as an Aircraft Apprentice in 1923. However, he was only to last two days as he failed the medical. Determined to succeed, he took medical advise on how to bulk up and went on a special diet and physical training programme. Despite putting on an additional three inches to his height and chest expansion rate, he failed the medical again. Undeterred, he applied again under an assumed name and presented himself as a candidate at the No 2 School of Technical Training RAF Cranwell. This time he passed the physical and, in September that year, 364365 Boy Whittle, F, started his three-year training as an aircraft mechanic in No. 1 Squadron of No. 4 Apprentices Wing, RAF Cranwell.

While the strict discipline of RAF life was not in keeping with Frank’s adventurous and rebellious streak, his skills for designing and building caught the attention of the Wing Commander, who put him forward for officer training at RAF College Cranwell. This was a dream come true as Frank would also train to fly.

A requirement of the course was that each student had to produce a thesis for graduation: Whittle decided to write his on potential aircraft design developments, notably flight at high altitudes and speeds over 500 mph (800 km/h). In Future Developments in Aircraft Design he showed that incremental improvements in existing propeller engines were unlikely to make such flight routine. Instead he described what is today referred to as a motorjet; an air compressor using a conventional piston engine to provide compressed air to a combustion chamber whose exhaust was used directly for thrust – essentially an afterburner attached to a piston engine driven air compressor.

Whittle graduated in 1928 at the age of 21 and was commissioned as a pilot officer in July. He ranked second in his class in academics, won the Andy Fellowes Memorial Prize for Aeronautical Sciences for his thesis, and was described as an "exceptional to above average" pilot. However, his flight logbook also showed numerous red ink warnings about showboating and overconfidence.

Whittle continued working on the motorjet principle after his thesis work but eventually abandoned it when further calculations showed it would weigh as much as a conventional engine of the same thrust. Pondering the problem he thought: "Why not substitute a turbine for the piston engine?" Instead of using a piston engine driven compressor to provide the compressed air for the burner, a turbine could be used to extract some power from the exhaust and drive a compressor, similar as in a turbocharger. The remaining exhaust thrust would power the aircraft.

On 27th August 1928, Pilot Officer Whittle joined No. 111 Squadron, Hornchurch, flying Siskin IIIs. His continuing reputation for low flying and aerobatics provoked a public complaint that almost led to his being court-martialed. Within a year he was posted to the Central Flying School, then at RAF Wittering, for a flying instructor's course. He became a popular and gifted instructor, and was selected as one of the entrants in a competition to select a team to perform the "crazy flying" routine in the 1930 Royal Air Force Air Display at RAF Hendon. He destroyed two aircraft in accidents during rehearsals but remained unscathed on both occasions. After the second incident an enraged Flight Lieutenant Harold W. Raeburn said furiously, "Why don't you take all my bloody aeroplanes, make a heap of them in the middle of the aerodrome and set fire to them – it's quicker!"

Whittle continued to refine his ideas. While others criticised and suggested that his assumptions would never work, his friend Pat Johnson remained convinced of the validity of Whittle’s ideas and had him submit a patent. Since the RAF was not interested in the concept they did not declare it secret, meaning that Whittle was able to retain the rights to the idea, which would have otherwise been their property. Johnson arranged a meeting with British Thomson-Houston whose chief turbine engineer seemed to agree with the basic idea. However, BTH did not want to spend the £60,000 it would cost to develop it, and this potential brush with early success went no further.

Frank would continue to meet with engineering giants, trying to find funding to build prototype engines. He could barely afford the patent renewal fee when it became due in January 1935, and because the Air Ministry refused to pay it the patent was allowed to lapse. Shortly afterwards, in May, he received mail from Rolf Dudley-Williams, who had been with him at Cranwell in the 1920s and Felixstowe in 1930. Williams arranged a meeting with Whittle, himself, and another by-then-retired RAF serviceman, James Collingwood Tinling. A partnership was proposed that allowed them to act on Whittle's behalf to gather public financing so that development could go ahead. This plan was to pay off and in 1936 Power Jets Ltd was created.

The Air Ministry still saw little immediate value in supporting Whittle’s efforts, so Power Jets entered into an agreement with British Thomson-Houston to build an experimental engine facility at a factory in Rugby, Warwickshire. Work progressed quickly, and by the end of the year 1936 the prototype detail design was finalised and parts for it were well on their way to being completed, all within the original £2,000 budget. German counterparts however, had received much more state support, and ultimately the Luftwaffe beat the British efforts into the air by nine months.

Finally the Air Ministry became interested in Whittle’s work and decided to fund further development. The paperwork came through in March 1938 and further work was subject to the Official Secrets Act.

In Germany, Hans von Ohain had filed for a patent in 1935, which in 1939, led to the world's first flyable jet aircraft, the Heinkel He 178, powered by the Heinkel HeS 3. There is little doubt that Whittle's efforts would have been at the same level or even more advanced had the Air Ministry taken a greater interest in the design.

Whittle's smoking increased to three packs a day and he suffered from various stress-related ailments such as frequent severe headaches, indigestion, insomnia, anxiety, eczema and heart palpitations, while his weight dropped to just nine stone. To keep to his 16-hour workdays, he sniffed benzedrine during the day and then took tranquillisers and sleeping pills at night to offset the effects and allow him to sleep.

On 30th June 1939, Power Jets could barely afford to keep the lights on when yet another visit was made by Air Ministry personnel. Whittle ran the third reconstructed W.U. at 16,000 rpm for 20 minutes without any difficulty. The Ministry agreed to buy the W.U. and then lend it back to them, injecting cash, and placed an order for a flyable version of the engine, referred to as the Power Jets W.1 and Power Jets W.2. By then, the Ministry had a tentative contract with the Gloster Aircraft Company for a simple aircraft specifically to flight-test the W.1, the single-engine Gloster E.28/39.

When war was declared, everything ramped up at speed and Power Jets would have 70 employees by September 1940.

The definitive W.1 of 850 lbf (3.8 kN) thrust ran on 12 April 1941, and on 15 May the W.1-powered E.28/39 took off from Cranwell at 7:40 pm, flying for 17 minutes and reaching a maximum speed of around 340 mph (545 km/h). Within days the aircraft was reaching 370 mph (600 km/h) at 25,000 feet (7,600 m), exceeding the performance of the contemporary Supermarine Spitfire fighters.

The stress on Whittle was expressed in a 27 May 1941 letter to Henry Tizard:

The responsibility that rests on my shoulders is very heavy indeed. We are faced with two alternatives – either we place a powerful weapon in the hands of the Royal Air Force or, if we fail to get our results in time, we may have falsely raised hopes and caused action to be taken which may deprive the Royal Air Force of hundreds of aeroplanes that it badly needs.

On 10th December 1941 Whittle suffered a nervous breakdown, and left work for a month. However, by the end of January 1942, Power Jets had three engines. A month later, flight trials began, which reached speeds of 430 mph (690 km/h) at 15,000 feet.

In January 1944 Whittle was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the New Year Honours. By this time he was a group captain, having been promoted from wing commander in July 1943.

After negotiations, Power Jets was to be nationalised for an offer of £135,500. Whittle had already offered to surrender his shares so he would receive nothing at all while Williams and Tinling each received around £46,800 for their stock.

After the war, Whittle accepted a post as Technical Advisor on Engine Design and Production to Controller of Supplies (Air); was made a Commander of the US Legion of Merit; and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1947. During May 1948 Whittle received an ex-gratia award of £100,000 from the Royal Commission on Awards to Inventors in recognition of his work on the jet engine, and two months later he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

During a lecture tour in the US, Whittle again broke down and retired from the RAF on medical grounds on 26 August 1948, leaving with the rank of air commodore. He joined BOAC as a technical advisor on aircraft gas turbines and travelled extensively over the next few years, viewing jet engine developments around the world.

Whittle died of lung cancer on 9th August 1996, at his home in Columbia, Maryland. He was cremated in America and his ashes were flown to England where they were placed in a memorial in a church in Cranwell.

Frank Whittle's story is an enduring example of British ingenuity and perseverance. Despite initial resistance and funding challenges, his achievements underscored the importance of investing in research and development. His work inspired generations of engineers and inventors.

Advent Calendar - Day 18 - Mary Elmes

Marie Elisabeth Jean Elmes was an Irish aid worker credited with saving the lives of at least 200 Jewish children in France during the Second World War.

In 2015, she became the first and so far only, Irish person honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.

Mary (as she would later be known) was born on 5th May 1908 into a prosperous home in Ballintemple, Cork city. Her father Edward was a pharmacist and her mother Elisabeth campaigned for the vote for women as treasurer of the Munster Women’s Franchise League.

At a very young age, Mary was aware of the First World War. She knitted socks for soldiers, but in May 1915 when the Cunard ocean liner the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Cork, she and her family joined the thousands who flocked to Cobh to help the survivors.

When she finished school, she spent a year in France and came home with near-perfect French. She went on to study Modern Languages (French and Spanish) at Trinity College Dublin where she excelled.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Mary would have been keenly aware of the political background but nothing could have prepared her for the suffering she witnessed when she volunteered to join Sir George Young’s University Ambulance Unit. She arrived in Spain in February 1937 and was assigned to a feeding station in Almeria.

She soon gained a reputation as a shrewd and able administrator who was clear-headed and unsentimental in the chaos of war. As the fascist army advanced, Mary moved eastwards, from Murcia to Alicante and then into the mountains at Polop, setting up and running children’s hospitals as she went. When her father died unexpectedly in Cork at the end of 1937, she missed the funeral because she refused to abandon her post when a replacement couldn’t be found.

She left Spain only when it became impossible for aid workers to stay and then she followed her beloved Spanish refugees over the border into France. Using the skills she had acquired, Mary set up workshops, canteens, schools and hospitals in the hastily erected camp-villages in southwest France.

Now operating in Vichy controlled France, Mary put her skills to use once more, hiding Jewish children. She rescued nine Jewish children from the first convoy bound for Auschwitz on 11th August 1942. She bundled them into the boot of her car and drove them to the children’s homes she had set up in the foothills of the Pyrenees and along the coast.

Between August and October 1942, Mary and her colleagues saved an estimated 427 children from Rivesaltes internment camp. Her efforts brought her to the attention of the Gestapo and in early 1943 she was arrested and jailed for six months. When asked about it afterwards, she simply said: “Well, we all experienced inconveniences in those days, didn’t we?”

When the war was over, she married Frenchman Roger Danjou in Perpignan and they had two children, Caroline and Patrick. She spoke little of the war or what she had done, refusing all accolades in her lifetime.

In 2011, nine years after her death at the age 93, one of the children she saved, Professor Ronald Friend, nominated her for Israel’s highest award; two years later she was named Righteous Among the Nations.

Advent Calendar - Day 17 - John Howard

Major Reginald John Howard DSO led arguably the most audacious attack of D-Day at Pegasus Bridge in 1944. He is the feature of today’s advent calendar. For the rest of the post, I shall refer to him as John.

John was born on 8th December 1912 to Jack and Ethel Howard of London, UK. He was the eldest of nine children and his father who had served in the First World War, became a cooper for Courage Brewery.

John initially joined the British Army before the war, serving as a private soldier and then a non-commissioned officer for six years before discharging in 1938 and joining the Oxford City Police. At the outbreak of war, he was recalled to the army and quickly rose through the ranks to become a regimental sergeant major in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry. In 1940 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and eventually rose to be a major in 1942, at which time he took over command of 'D' Company, 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

His company was selected to carry out the assault on the Caen and Orne River bridges and he became personally responsible for their training and the planning of the assault. These were the only crossing points between Caen and the sea, so the Germans needed them if they were going to get to the British sector and drive them back into the sea. Equally, the Allies needed the bridges in tact to advance the bridge-head.

The Plan

A glider mission was conceived as it would be quicker for them to hit the ground and deliver troops, rather than waiting for paratroopers to group up and make their way to the bridge.

Three gliders flew towards Caen and then made two right angle turns. This allowed them to use the glint of moonlight in the canal to fly by. All they had to navigate was a pocket compass and a stopwatch. John asked his pilot, Jim Walkwark to put the nose of the glider through a barbed wire fence, and that is exactly what he did. As they made their final descent the men were ordered to link arms and raise their legs in the air as the bottom of the carriage would inevitably get ripped up and cause broken limbs. They touched down, released the parachute break for a few seconds and then cut that loose. Not only had the glider gone through the barbed wire fence, Walkwark got his men just 47 yards from the bridge.

There was a small pause as the men brought themselves too, realised they were safe and got to work. The chaps clambered out of a small door on the right-hand side, went around the tail and towards the bridge. Gliders 92 and 93 were just one minute behind the lead glider. Boland, who was flying Glider 92 thought they were going to end up in the swampy marsh, so yanked the glider around which caused it to split in two.

Once each glider was the on ground the work really began. The first task was for a small group of scouts to get to the pillbox and knock it out with hand grenades which is exactly what they did.

The two sentries on the bridge hadn’t seen anything and only heard what they thought was a small thud, so when the first troops came running at them they turned and fled! As they did, they fired off a flare. Two machine guns opened up but were swiftly dealt with, but not before killing Lt Den Brotheridge just before he got to the end of the bridge.

Next the trenches that ran along the canal side needed clearing. The engineers were then sent to clear any explosives strapped to the bottom of the bridge. What they found were painted markings for where the explosives should have been, but nothing was actually in place. This incredibly important strategic asset was secured in just 15 minutes.

Let’s just stop to think about the weight of burden on Major Howard’s shoulders. This was the very first action of D-Day. It would set the tone for the day and dictate many further outcomes. Major Howard had planned this meticulously and trained his men so hard that they knew their jobs inside out. He also knew that until the 7th Parachute Regiment arrived, they would be on their own facing god knows what enemy strength.

After D-Day

John would command his company until September 1944 when they were withdrawn from the line. Due to the injuries he sustained in a car accident in November 1944, he took no further part in the war and was eventually invalided out of the British Army in 1946.

His role in the assault on the bridges was detailed in a number of books and films since the war, and after he retired he gave a number of lectures in Europe and the United States on tactics and on the assault itself.

He died in 1999, at the age of 86.

Advent Calendar - Day 16 - Airey Neave

Today’s advent calendar concerns the actions of Lieutenant Colonel Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave.

Our Parliament today has very few former soldiers, or indeed reservists that can be called upon, but this was certainly not always the case. Indeed post the Second World War, almost every British politician had served their country in some capacity between 1939 - 1945. In the Heath government, every cabinet member had served, except one…I shall leave you to work out which hadn’t.

Airey Neave was to become a household name, not only for his political views, but for his Second World War prowess.

Neave was to study at Eton and then Merton College Oxford. At Eton, Neave served in the school cadet corps as a cadet Lance Corporal, and received a territorial commission as a Second Lieutenant in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on 11th December 1935.

Neave transferred his territorial commission to the Royal Engineers on 2nd May 1938 and following the outbreak of war he was mobilised. Sent to France in February 1940 with 1st Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery, he was wounded and captured by the Germans at Calais on 23rd May 1940. He was imprisoned at Oflag IX-A/H near Spangenberg and in February 1941 moved to Stalag XX-A near Thorn in German-occupied western Poland. During this time, his commission was transferred to the Royal Artillery on 1st August 1940.

In April 1941 he escaped from Thorn with Norman Forbes. They were captured near Ilow while trying to enter Soviet-controlled Poland and were briefly in the hands of the Gestapo. In May, they were both sent to Oflag IV-C, which we now refer to as Colditz.

Neave made his first attempt to escape from Colditz on 28th August 1941 disguised as a German NCO. Alas he was caught in the act as the Polish uniform he used and painted shone bright green under the searchlights!

Together with Dutch officer Anthony Luteyn, he made a second attempt on 5th January 1942, again in disguise. This time with better uniforms and a planned escape route (they made a quick exit from a theatrical production using the trap door beneath the stage) the two men made it out. They travelled by train and on foot to Leipzig and Ulm and finally reached the border to Switzerland near Singen. Via France, Spain and Gibraltar, Neave returned to England in April 1942. Neave became the first British officer to escape Colditz.

Shortly after his return to England he was awarded the Military Cross and then promoted to Captain.

After his escape, Neave was recruited as an intelligence officer for MI9, supporting underground escape organisations in occupied Europe, with equipment, agents and money; assisting downed Allied airmen and other Allied military personnel evade and escape capture by the Germans. In Western Europe, about 5,000 British and American military personnel were rescued by the escape organisations and repatriated to the United Kingdom, mostly through neutral Spain, before D-Day. After June 1944, Neave journeyed to France and Belgium and, with help from the Comet Line and the Resistance, rescued more than 300 allied airmen who had taken refuge in forest camps after being shot down.

He also served with the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials, investigating Krupp. Given he spoke fluent German, he was asked to read the indictments to the Nazi leaders on trial.

A temporary lieutenant-colonel by 1947, he was appointed an OBE (Military Division) in that year's Birthday Honours. He was awarded the Bronze Star by the US government on 20 July 1948,and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel on 1 April 1950. He entered the reserves on 21 September 1951.

Neave was elected to Parliament in 1953, representing the Conservatives in Abingdon.

Two decades later, he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland .

On 30 March 1979, Airey Neave was mortally wounded when a car bomb fitted with a tilt-switch exploded under his vehicle as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster car park. He lost both legs in the explosion and died of his wounds at Westminster Hospital an hour after being rescued from the wrecked car. He was 63.

The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) afterwards claimed responsibility for the assassination.

Following his death, Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher said of Neave:

He was one of freedom's warriors. No one knew of the great man he was, except those nearest to him. He was staunch, brave, true, strong; but he was very gentle and kind and loyal. It's a rare combination of qualities. There's no one else who can quite fill them. I, and so many other people, owe so much to him and now we must carry on for the things he fought for and not let the people who got him triumph.

Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan said: "No effort will be spared to bring the murderers to justice and to rid the United Kingdom of the scourge of terrorism."

Airey Neave’s name is most notably known for his cruel assassination. I would like this post to remember the important work he did for his country in the Second World War and the determination he brought to the fight against fascism. Upon escape, he put his experience to use, helping hundreds of others.

Advent Calendar - Day 15 - Edward Rust

Today’s post is a personal one for Sophie and team member Steve.

Day 15 follows the story of Edward Rust.

Edward was born in 1896 and was the eldest son of the Reverend Edward and Sarah Rust.

He joined the 4th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment in March 1914, whilst he was still a student at Scorton Grammar School. When war was declared he volunteered for foreign service, landing in France with the rest of the battalion on 18 April 1915. The battalion were serving with 150th Brigade, 50th (Northumbrian) Division.

On 22nd April 1915, the Germans launched the 2nd Battle of Ypres, using poison gas in mass for the first time on the Western Front. Edward’s battalion was called forward with the rest of their brigade to support the Canadians, who were needed to close a gap in the line caused by this release of gas, which was overwhelming the French Colonial troops stationed on the outskirts of Ypres. This gap needed closing otherwise the Germans could have broken through to the strategically important town of Ypres in Belgium.

One witness of the advance to assist the Canadians noted,

When we got to Ypres, we found a lot of Canadians lying there dead from gas the day before, poor devils, and it was quite a horrible sight for us young men.

On 24th April 1915, the 4th Battalion were ordered to advance towards St Julien, situated to the north east of Ypres, to support the 3rd and 14th Battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Unbeknown to them, the Germans had captured St Julien and were now moving southwards.

The battalion had advanced a mile when they came up against artillery and machine gun fire forcing them to hold a line that came level with the village of Fortuin where they held some dead ground between a sunken road and the Hanebeek Stream. Here they counter attacked with two Companies who advanced in rushes forcing the Germans to fall back on St Julien.

The 4th Battalion’s war diary noted,

We started off, both flanks in the air, with little artillery support proceeding under fire to Fortuin. We could find no one in superior command. We heard fighting going on towards St Julien and saw a few men retiring. We therefore changed front left and joined in under heavy rifle and machine gun fire we took up position about 700 yards south of St Julien and endeavoured to get orders and information so things looked pretty bad and there seemed a fair chance of both the 4th E. Yorks and ourselves being cut off and unable to extricate ourselves.

In this attack the battalion lost their C.O. and Adjutant along with 3 other officers and 69 other ranks killed or wounded but the battalion held the line after reinforcements came up to support them.

In this fighting Edward was twice wounded and he and was taken to a field hospital, but returned to the firing line the following evening, where he remained with the battalion until it was relieved on the 29th April. Sadly, it was reported that Edward died from his wounds just as he left the trenches.

Edward’s company commander, Captain Maughan wrote,

The youngest man in my company, he shared in all the arduous duties and marches, and I never knew him utter a complaint.

Edward was aged 19 when he died and is now buried in Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery and he is one of only a few casualties who now has a very rare inscription on his headstone which states,

SERIOUSLY WOUNDED WHILE ADVANCING WITH HIS REGIMENT IN THE FIGHTING NEAR ST. JULIEN SAT. APRIL 24. 1915 HE WAS TAKEN TO THE FIELD HOSPITAL BUT WAS SO EAGER TO UPHOLD THE HONOUR OF HIS REGIMENT AND TO SERVE HIS COUNTRY THAT HE RETURNED NEXT DAY TO THE FIRING LINE AND REMAINED WITH HIS COMRADES UNTIL THEY WERE RELIEVED AND DIED ON APRIL 30TH COURAGEOUS TO THE END AND BELOVED BY ALL WHO KNEW HIM

A tablet was also erected to his memory by the scholars of the Scorton Grammar School, and this was unveiled by the Reverend W. Kerr Smith, Governor of the School, on 29 July, 1915, and a stained-glass window was placed to his memory in Hamsteels Parish Church where is father was the Rector.

Steve and I had the pleasure of accompanying two members of Edward’s family on a pilgrimage to follow in his footsteps. We got to the ‘dead ground’ noted in the war diaries and could look out across at where his battalion gallantly held the line. We then visited his grave and spent some time paying our respects. These are the incredibly moving moments that we guides work hard for. We are always honoured to be trusted with the stories of these young men by their family members. We are furthered honoured that Bill and Sheila, Edward’s family, have put their trust in SGWT three times now, following three exceptionally brave men across two world wars.

Edward Rust was a young man with a good future ahead of him, but he felt the need to serve his country. Despite his young years, he did not wish to leave his comrades in the lurch despite two serious wounds. He insisted on getting back to the line so that he could continue to serve when what he really needed was extended medical care. That decision, to put others ahead of his own needs, claimed his life.

Advent Calendar - Day 14 - Frank Hurd

Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the British government set up a system of Air Raid Precautions in the anticipation of a European war coming to its doorstep.

If an enemy were to drop bombs upon its cities, starting fires that would spread and cause further chaos, an Auxiliary Fire Service would be needed to supplement the existing fire service provision.

One of those volunteer fireman was Frank Hurd, a 24 year old from Islington, London.

He shared his experiences of the first raid on London on 7th September 1940. He was stationed at Euston Road fire station where all the waiting that night was getting him and his mates on edge.

We were getting a bit fed up with this sort of thing and I think a few of us (I know I did) half-hoped for 'something to happen' & then felt ashamed for letting the monotony 'get us down'.

Not long into the night however, the team would be sent over to East Ham, quite the journey. The first signs of the Blitz came upon them.

Houses were demolished, roads torn up and a surface shelter had been wrecked. Ambulances and rescue squads were at work at we passed. Fires of varying sizes were visible all round.

After being ordered to Beckton Gas Works, Hurd experienced his first bomb:

A weird whistling sound and I ducked beside the pump with two more of the crew…then a vivid flash of flame, a column of earth and debris flying into the air, and the ground heaved. I was thrown violently against the side of the appliance.

While the gas works burned, Hurd was forced to wait while others went to fetch water. Looking around he marvelled at the sights:

What a sight. About a mile away to our right was the river front. The whole horizon on that side was a sheet of flame. The docks were afire! On all other sides it was much the same. Fires everywhere. The sky was a vivid orange glow. And all the time the whole area was being mercilessly bombed.  The road shuddered with the explosions. A-A [anti-aircraft] shells were bursting overhead. A Royal Navy destroyer berthed in one of the docks was firing her A-A equipment, as were other ships. The shrapnel literally rained down. It was now about midnight and still this incessant racket kept on.

Despite the noise and danger of the raid, Hurd found himself surprised by how quickly he became accustomed to it:

It surprised me how quickly we got used to sensing whether a bomb was coming our way or not. At first we all lay flat every time we heard anything but after an hour or so we only dived for it if one came particularly close.

Then, in the middle of the night:

At about 3:30 a.m. a canteen van arrived and served us out tea and sandwiches. It was the first bite any of us had for fourteen and a half hours.

After a final flurry of bombing and gunfire:

Quite suddenly, it ceased. The silence was almost overpowering for a time. Then, about five a.m. the 'All Clear' went. We had been subjected, without any real cover to eight hours' bombing!

Yet Hurd still had to remain on the scene for a few hours longer. By now the fires were drawing in firefighters from across southern England:

We stayed there until ten o'clock on Sunday morning when our Sub-officer handed over control to another officer. This officer and his ten pumps, we afterwards found out came from Brighton!

This account came from Hurd in early December 1940. Later that month, on the night of 29-30 December, the Luftwaffe mounted a massive raid on the City of London, dropping more than 100,000 incendiary bombs. Hurd fought fires near Smithfield Market but was injured that night. He would die in hospital on 30 December 1940.

During the Second World War, 327 London firemen were killed.

Frank is rightly honoured as one of those men that volunteered to save lives by fighting fires and to save as much of the city he loved.

Advent Calendar - Day 13 - Marie Moravcová

Marie Moravcova was born in Prague (now in Czechia) on 24 August 1898. She is included in this year’s advent calendar for her role in Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.

With Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the 1930s, he set about delivering on his policy promise of delivering Lebensraum, ‘living space’, first by annexing the Sudetenland on 1st October 1938. Just a couple of months previous to this, the Munich Agreement had been signed by representatives of Britain, France, and Italy, in essence agreeing to Germany's claim over the Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge of peace. On 15th March 1939, Germany invaded the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, breaking the Munich Pact.

Marie joined the Czech resistance that month.

Czechoslovakia would governed by a Reichsprotektor, in this case, Reinhard Heydrich, also known as the Butcher of Prague. Heydrich was chief of the Reich Security Main Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). He chaired the January 1942 Wannsee Conference which formalised plans for the "Final Solution to the Jewish question"—the deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe. Other than the Fuhrer himself, he was one of the top targets for elimination.

In 1942, two Czechoslovak paratroopers (Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš) were flown in. Marie’s apartment would become the most important contact point for the assassins. Marie, also known as Aunt Moravcová, worked not only to look after the two men when they were in Prague before the operation, but she also worked as a courier and food supplier. Her husband and younger son Vlastimil were also involved in helping the paratroopers.

Operation Anthropoid was successfully carried out on 27th May 1942 although Heydrich only died of wounds on 4th June.

After the assassination, the family’s involvement in the plot was revealed and on the night of 17th June, the Gestapo raided their apartment. Marie poisoned herself with an ampoule of cyanide, which the paratroopers had previously given her at her request, so that she would not fall alive into the hands of the Nazis. Her husband, Alois Moravec, and younger son Vlastimil were executed in the Mauthausen concentration camp on 24th October 1942.

Marie was an ordinary woman that saw her country being taken from her by an evil regime. She wanted to do her bit, knowing full well the consequences not just for her life, but for that of her family. Often the names of service personnel are those that live on in history, but those combatants cannot do their duty without the support of civilians risking everything. That is why today, we honour Marie and her family.

Travel to Prague

Prague is a wonderful city of explore with hundreds of years of history to be discovered, great food, music and of course, Pilsner! It is still possible to visit the site of Heydrich’s assassination. Contact the team today and we’d love to plan the perfect historical weekend getaway.

Advent Calendar - day 12 - Norman Jackson

Today’s advent post is that of Norman Cyril Jackson VC, perhaps the most extraordinary VC citation I have ever read. Though, to be awarded a VC, one must do something rather spectacular, so reading citations are often jaw-dropping moments.

Norman was born on 8th April 1919 and was adopted just one week later by the Gunter family.

Norman qualified as a fitter and turner so technically was in a reserved occupation. He joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1939 and originally served as a Classified Fitter IIE (engines).

In January 1941, he was assigned to a Sunderland flying boat squadron based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. He applied for retraining as a flight engineer and returned to England in September 1942.

On 28 July 1943, he joined No. 106 Squadron which operated Lancaster bombers. He completed his tour of 30 missions on 24 April 1944, but, as he had flown one sortie with a different crew, he wanted to do one more with his original crew mates. This 31st mission was to be a raid on the German ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt on the night of 26–27 April 1943.

Having bombed the target, Jackson's Lancaster was attacked by a German night fighter and a fuel tank in the starboard wing caught fire. Norman, already wounded from shell splinters, strapped on a parachute, grabbed a fire extinguisher and clambered outside onto the wing.

The plane was travelling at 140 miles per hour. He gripped the air intake on the leading edge of the wing with one hand, and fought the fire with the other. The flames seared his hands, face, and clothes. A fighter came back and attacked the bomber again, a burst of gunfire sending two bullets into Norman’s his legs. The burst also swept him off the wing.

He fell 20,000 feet but his parachute saved his life. He broke his ankle on landing but he managed to crawl to a nearby German village the next morning.

He spent 10 months recovering in hospital before being transferred to Stalag IX-C prisoner-of-war camp. He made two escape attempts, the second of which was successful.

Norman’s exploit on the burning Lancaster wing became known when the surviving crewmen of his bomber were released from POW camps at the end of the war.

He was promoted to warrant officer and his Victoria Cross award was gazetted on 26 October 1945.

Norman’s VC citation read:

The KING has been graciously pleased to confer the VICTORIA CROSS in recognition of most conspicuous bravery to:-

905192 Sergeant (Now Warrant Officer) Norman Cyril Jackson R.A.F.V.R., 106 Squadron.

This airman was the flight engineer in a Lancaster detailed to attack Schweinfurt on the night of 26th April 1944. Bombs were dropped successfully and the aircraft was climbing out of the target area. Suddenly it was attacked by a fighter at about 20,000 feet. The captain took evading action at once, but the enemy secured many hits. A fire started near a petrol tank on the upper surface of the starboard wing, between the fuselage and the inner engine.

Sergeant Jackson was thrown to the floor during the engagement. Wounds which he received from shell splinters in the right leg and shoulder were probably sustained at that time. Recovering himself, he remarked that he could deal with the fire on the wing and obtained his captain's permission to try to put out the flames.

Pushing a hand fire-extinguisher into the top of his life-saving jacket and clipping on his parachute pack, Sergeant Jackson jettisoned the escape hatch above the pilot's head. He then started to climb out of the cockpit and back along the top of the fuselage to the starboard wing. Before he could leave the fuselage his parachute pack opened and the whole canopy and rigging lines spilled into the cockpit.

Undeterred, Sergeant Jackson continued. The pilot (Fred Mifflin), bomb aimer (Maurice Toft) and navigator (Frank Higgins) gathered the parachute together and held on to the rigging lines, paying them out as the airman crawled aft. Eventually he slipped and, falling from the fuselage to the starboard wing, grasped an air intake on the leading edge of the wing. He succeeded in clinging on but lost the extinguisher, which was blown away.

By this time, the fire had spread rapidly and Sergeant Jackson was involved. His face, hands and clothing were severely burnt. Unable to retain his hold he was swept through the flames and over the trailing edge of the wing, dragging his parachute behind. When last seen it was only partly inflated and was burning in a number of places.

Realising that the fire could not be controlled, the captain gave the order to abandon aircraft. Four of the remaining members of the crew landed safely. The captain and rear gunner have not been accounted for.

Sergeant Jackson was unable to control his descent and landed heavily. He sustained a broken ankle, his right eye was closed through burns and his hands were useless. These injuries, together with the wounds received earlier, reduced him to a pitiable state. At daybreak he crawled to the nearest village, where he was taken prisoner. He bore the intense pain and discomfort of the journey to Dulag Luft with magnificent fortitude. After ten months in hospital he made a good recovery, though his hands require further treatment and are only of limited use.

This airman's attempt to extinguish the fire and save the aircraft and crew from falling into enemy hands was an act of outstanding gallantry. To venture outside, when travelling at 200 miles an hour, at a great height and in intense cold, was an almost incredible feat. Had he succeeded in subduing the flames, there was little or no prospect of his regaining the cockpit. The spilling of his parachute and the risk of grave damage to its canopy reduced his chances of survival to a minimum. By his ready willingness to face these dangers he set an example of self-sacrifice which will ever be remembered.

Wow. Just wow. What some people can do in the most difficult of circumstances, where almost certain death is just around the corner, in order to save others, is truly staggering.

Norman survived the war, went on to marry and had seven children. He died in 1994 and is buried in 1994.

Advent Calendar - Day 11 - Anne Frank

Perhaps one of the most famous individuals chosen for this year’s advent calendar is Anne Frank.

Anne Frank was born in the German city of Frankfurt am Main in 1929. She was born in a country that was still recovering from the social and economic disaster of the First World War and a global financial crisis was just around the corner.

Through this chaos came a man that claimed he had the answers and knew who had caused all of Germany’s problems. Adolf Hitler hated the Jews and blamed them for the problems that the country faced. Anne’s parents could see this blatant rise in anti-semitism and opted to move to Amsterdam, Netherlands. There, Otto founded a company that traded in pectin, a gelling agent for making jam.

Life in Amsterdam

It didn’t take long for the Frank’s to settle into a new homeland. They learnt the language, made new connections and Anne went to school not far from home.

When Anne was aged 10, the Second World War broke out. Just eight months later, the Netherlands was invaded and the Nazi regime established itself across all parts of life. Regulations prohibited many things for Jews, included a ban on visiting sites such as parks, cinemas and non-Jewish run shops. All Jewish children had to go to separate Jewish schools.

Into Hiding

When Anne’s sister Margot received a call-up to report for a so-called ‘labour camp’ in Nazi Germany on 5 July 1942, her parents were suspicious. They did not believe the call-up was about work and decided to go into hiding the next day.

Otto Frank had a good idea of what was happening to his fellow Jewish man, and so began furnishing a hiding place in the annex of his business premises at Prinsengracht 263. Moving into this set of rooms, the Frank’s were to be joined by four others.

The Diary

On her thirteenth birthday, just before they went into hiding, Anne was presented with a diary. During the two years in hiding, Anne wrote about events in the Secret Annex, but also about her feelings and thoughts. In addition, she wrote short stories, started on a novel and copied passages from the books she read in her Book of Beautiful Sentences. Writing was a method of passing the time.  

When the Minister of Education of the Dutch government in England made an appeal on Radio Orange to hold on to war diaries and documents, Anne was inspired to rewrite her individual diaries into one running story, titled Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex). 

The hiding place is discovered 

Anne started rewriting her diary, but before she was done, the annex was discovered on 4 August 1944. The police also arrested two of the helpers. To this day, the identity of those who betrayed the family remains uncertain.

Auschwitz 

Via the offices of the Sicherheitsdienst (the German security police), a prison in Amsterdam, and the Westerbork transit camp, all those from the Secret Annex were put on transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz around 350 people from Anne's transport were immediately taken to the gas chambers and murdered. Anne, her sister and mother were sent to a labour camp for women, their father to the men’s equivalent.

Bergen-Belsen

In early November 1944, Anne was put on transport again. She was deported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with Margot. Their parents stayed behind in Auschwitz. While in Belsen, the sisters contracted typhus, the disease that would claim their lives in February 1945, just three months before the end of the war in Europe. Anne was 15 years old.

Only Otto Frank would survive the war. He was liberated from Auschwitz by Soviet troops and during his long journey back to the Netherlands he learned that his wife Edith had died. Once in the Netherlands, he heard that Anne and Margot had also perished.

The Diary

Anne's writing made a deep impression on Otto. He read that Anne had wanted to become a writer or a journalist and that she had intended to publish her stories about life in the Secret Annex. Friends convinced Otto to publish the diary and in June 1947, 3,000 copies of Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex) were printed. 

The book would be translated into 70 languages and adapted for stage and screen. People all over the world were introduced to Anne's story and in 1960 the hiding place became a museum: the Anne Frank House. Until his death in 1980, Otto remained closely involved with the Anne Frank House and the museum: he hoped that readers of the diary would become aware of the dangers of discrimination, racism, and hatred of Jews. 

While one can say Anne Frank did not serve or save, her writings have taught millions of people about the horrors of the Nazi regime and the terror of hiding from it. Her work had educated and inspired and she will forever be one of the most published authors of all time. She is but one voice from over 6 million Jews that murdered, and countless million more than suffered at the hands of National Socialism.

Never Forget

If you would like to take a special pilgrimage to Belsen, Auschwitz or other areas synonymous with the Holocaust, please contact Sophie’s Great War Tours today.

Advent Calendar - Day 10 - Nicholas Winton

Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE is deservedly on the SGWT advent calendar due to his role in saving the lives of 669 children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia.

Nicholas was born on 19 May 1909 in London, to German Jewish parents, Rudolph and Barbara. The family name was Wertheim, but it was anglicized in a bid to integrate. They also converted to Christianity, and Winton was baptised.

His school education was not illustrious despite the institutions he went to, however, he went on to pursue work in banking in Hamburg, Paris and later back in London. He became a broker at the London Stock Exchange. Though a stockbroker, Winton was also an ardent socialist.

Shortly before Christmas 1938, Winton was planning to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday, however, friends had called him asking for help in assisting at risk Czech children from Nazi persecution. Winton spent three weeks in Prague setting up a system to get children evacuated.

Alongside a few volunteers including his mother, they worked tirelessly to arrange everything the children needed, including finding host families in the UK and raising funds to cover the travel expenses of the children.

He wrote to all manner of European politicians, urging them to take child refugees and to make the process of paperwork and finance easier.

He also wrote to U.S. politicians such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, asking them to take more children. He said that two thousand more might have been saved if they had helped, but only Sweden took any besides those sent to Britain. The last group of children, scheduled to leave Prague on 1 September 1939, was unable to depart. With Hitler's invasion of Poland on the same day, the Second World War had begun and of the 250 children due to leave on that train, only two survived the war.

Winton always acknowledged the vital roles in Prague of Doreen Warriner, Trevor Chadwick, Nicholas Stopford, Beatrice Wellington, Josephine Pike and Bill Barazetti as those that played key roles in getting children out of Prague.

His humanitarian accomplishments remained unknown and unnoticed by the world for nearly 50 years until 1988 when he was invited to the BBC television programme That's Life!, where he was reunited with dozens of the children he had helped come to Britain and was introduced to many of their children and grandchildren.

If you haven’t seen this clip, please google it, it is a heartbreakingly wonderful moment that can’t fail to bring a tear to the eye.

He was to become known as the "British Schindler". He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for "services to humanity, in saving Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia". In 2014, he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic, the Order of the White Lion (1st class), by Czech President Miloš Zeman.

Directly Nicholas with the help of others of course, saved 669 children from Nazi persecution. Who knows how many live now because of his efforts. He encouraged others not to give up the fight. He must remembered as a truly great man, that served to save others.

Advent Calendar - Day 9 - Edith Cavell

Edith Louisa Cavell was born on 4th December 1865 to the Reverend Frederick and ?? She was to grow up in Swardeston. Norfolk, UK, in the house financed by her father. This project nearly financially destroyed him and as a result, the family grew up in near poverty. She was educated at home and latterly Norwich.

After a period as a governess, including for a family in Brussels from 1890 to 1895, Cavell returned home to care for her father during a serious illness. The experience led her to pursue a career as a nurse after her father’s recovery.

She worked across London and Maidstone, Kent during the Maidstone typhoid epidemic, from 15 October 1897 until early January 1898.

Once fully qualified she was a private nurse employed by the Private Nursing Institution of the London Hospital, treating patients in their homes. In November 1903, she became assistant matron of St Leonard's Infirmary in Shoreditch, London.

In 1907, Cavell was recruited by Dr. Antoine Depage, the Belgian royal surgeon, and the founder and president of the Belgian Red Cross, to be matron of a newly established nursing school, L'École Belge d'Infirmières Diplômées. Within a year, she was training nurses for three hospitals, twenty-four schools, and thirteen kindergartens in Belgium. In 1910, Cavell was asked if she would be the matron for the new secular hospital at Saint-Gilles.

At the outbreak of war, Edith is back in Norfolk visiting her mother. She decides to return to Brussels to carry on her work as her clinic and nursing school have been taken over by the Red Cross. She writes, ‘My duty is with my nurses’. As the German forces approaches Brussels, she said ‘Any wounded soldier must be treated, friend or foe. Each man is a father, husband or son. As nurses you must take no part in the quarrel – our work is for humanity. The profession of nursing knows no frontiers.’ 

In November 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Cavell began sheltering British soldiers and arranging their escape out of occupied Belgium to neutral Netherlands. She would hide wounded British and French soldiers in her house and elsewhere and provide money and papers to aid their escape.

Cavell was arrested on 3rd August 1915 and charged with harbouring Allied soldiers. She had been betrayed by Georges Gaston Quien, who was later convicted by a French court as a collaborator. She was held in Saint-Gilles prison for ten weeks, the last two of which were spent in solitary confinement. She made three depositions to the German police (on 8, 18 and 22 August), admitting that she had been instrumental in conveying about 60 British and 15 French soldiers, as well as about 100 French and Belgian civilians of military age, to the frontier and had sheltered most of them in her house.

At her court-martial, Cavell was prosecuted for aiding British and French soldiers, and young Belgian men, to cross the Dutch border and eventually enter Britain. She admitted her guilt when she signed a statement the day before the trial. Cavell declared that the soldiers she had helped escape thanked her in writing when they arrived safely in Britain. This admission confirmed that Cavell had not only helped the soldiers navigate the Dutch frontier, but it also established that she helped them escape to a country at war with Germany.

The penalty, according to German military law, was death. Paragraph 58 of the German Military Code determined that "In time of war, anyone who, with the intention of aiding a hostile power, or of causing harm to German or allied troops", commits any of the crimes defined in paragraph 90 of the German Penal Code "shall be punished with death for war treason". Specifically, Cavell was charged under paragraph 90 (1) no. 3 Reichsstrafgesetzbuch, for "conveying troops to the enemy", a crime normally punishable by life imprisonment in peacetime. It was possible to charge Cavell with war treason s paragraph 160 of the German Military Code extended application of paragraph 58 to foreigners "present in the zone of war". While the First Geneva Convention ordinarily guaranteed protection of medical personnel, such protection was forfeit if medical practices were seen to be used as cover for belligerent action. This forfeiture is expressed in article 7 of the 1906 version of the convention, which was the version in force at the time and was used to justify the sentence.

German civil governor Baron von der Lancken is known to have stated that Cavell should be pardoned because of her complete honesty and because she had helped save so many lives, German as well as Allied.

Execution

The night before her execution, Cavell told the Reverend H Stirling Gahan, the Anglican chaplain of Christ Church Brussels, who had been allowed to see her and to give her Holy Communion, "I am thankful to have had these ten weeks of quiet to get ready. Now I have had them and have been kindly treated here. I expected my sentence and I believe it was just. Standing as I do in view of God and Eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough, I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." Cavell's final words to the German Lutheran prison chaplain, Paul Le Seur, were recorded as, "Ask Father Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country."

At 7am on 12th October 1915, Edith Cavell was shot.

Her body was buried next to the prison but after the war her body returned for a memorial service at Westminster Abbey before being laid to rest at Norwich Cathedral. Cavell was one of only three sets of British remains repatriated following the end of the War.

Edith Cavell devoted her life to serving and saving others. She treated and cared for thousands of lives during her nursing career and while in wartime Belgium she treated soldiers on both sides of the wire.

Follow Nurses of 1WW

If you’d like to take a tour of the locations closely associated with either Edith or nursing units during the Great War, contact us today.

Advent Calendar - Day 8 - Freddie Stowers

Corporal Freddie Stowers was born in Sandy Springs, South Carolina, USA. Before the outbreak of the Great War, he worked as a farm hand. He married Pearl and they had a daughter called Minnie Lee.

Stowers was drafted into the Army in 1917, and assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion of the 371st Infantry Regiment, originally part of the 93d Infantry Division, a segregated unit.

Despite General Pershing’s express desire that American troops would fight as an independent force, not to be subsumed into French or British units for example, this zeal did not carry forward when it came to African American soldiers.

Initially, African American troops were officially barred from serving as front line infantry troops alongside their white comrades. Instead, they were put into the Service of Supply, labour units. This was critical work and no war can be fought without it, but these men wanted to do more. It was a very deliberate act of segregation. Facing mounting criticism from civil rights movements back home, two all black divisions were created, the 92nd and the 93rd. The 93rd served as part of the French 4th Army, wearing French uniforms and taking orders from French officers.

Early on the morning of 28th September 1918, Stowers' company was ordered to assault Côte 188, a heavily defended hill in the Ardennes region of the Western Front.

German resistance was initially strong with rapid rifle fire, machine gun nests littering the hillside and artillery raining down. American troops slowly made their way forward, until the Germans signalled that they would surrender. This proved to be a false flag, and the machine guns opened up once again on unsuspecting American troops. This took a terrible toll on Freddie’s unit, his Lieutenant and most senior NCO going down.

Freddie immediately took command of the situation and rallied his men. He began crawling toward a German machine gun nest and shouted for his men to follow. The platoon successfully reached the first German trench line and neutralised the machine guns by enfilade fire. Stowers then reorganised his force and led a charge against the second German line of trenches. During this second assault, Stowers was struck by fire from an enemy machine gun, but kept going until he was struck for a second time. He collapsed from loss of blood, but ordered his men not to be discouraged but to keep going. Inspired by Stowers' courage, the men forged ahead and successfully drove the Germans from the hill. Stowers however, was to die from those wounds. Freddie died wearing a French uniform.

He is buried at the stunning Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery.

Shortly after his death, Stowers was recommended for the Medal of Honor; however, this recommendation was never processed. Three other black soldiers were recommended for Medals of Honor, but were instead awarded the next highest award, the Distinguished Service Cross. In Stowers' case, the official position is that his recommendation was "misplaced," which is plausible given that the other three MOH recommendations for black soldiers were at least processed, even if the decision to award the DSC remains controversial and possibly racism-related.

In 1990, at the instigation of Congress, the Department of the Army conducted a review and the Stowers recommendation was uncovered. Subsequently, a team was dispatched to France to investigate the circumstances of Stowers' death. Based on information collected by this team, the Army Decorations Board approved the award of the Medal of Honor. On 24th April 1991, 73 years after his death, Stowers' surviving sisters, Georgina and Mary, received the medal from President George H. W. Bush at the White House.

His citation read:

Cpl. Freddie Stowers distinguished himself by exceptional heroism on 28 September 1918 while serving as a squad leader in Company C, 371st Infantry Regiment, 93d Infantry Division. His company was the lead company during the attack on Hill 188, Champagne Marne Sector, France, during World War I. A few minutes after the attack began, the enemy ceased firing and began climbing up onto the parapets of the trenches, holding up their arms as if wishing to surrender. The enemy's actions caused the American forces to cease fire and to come out into the open. As the company started forward and when within about 100 meters of the trench line, the enemy jumped back into their trenches and greeted Cpl. Stowers' company with interlocking bands of machine-gun fire and mortar fire causing well over fifty percent casualties. Faced with incredible enemy resistance, Cpl. Stowers took charge, setting such a courageous example of personal bravery and leadership that he inspired his men to follow him in the attack. With extraordinary heroism and complete disregard of personal danger under devastating fire, he crawled forward, leading his squad toward an enemy machine-gun nest which was causing heavy casualties to his company. After fierce fighting, the machine-gun position was destroyed and the enemy soldiers were killed. Displaying great courage and intrepidity Cpl. Stowers continued to press the attack against a determined enemy. While crawling forward and urging his men to continue the attack on a second trench line, he was gravely wounded by machine-gun fire. Although Cpl. Stowers was mortally wounded, he pressed forward, urging on the members of his squad, until he died. Inspired by the heroism and display of bravery of Cpl. Stowers, his company continued the attack against incredible odds, contributing to the capture of Hill 188 and causing heavy enemy casualties. Cpl. Stowers' conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary heroism, and supreme devotion to his men were well above and beyond the call of duty, follow the finest traditions of military service, and reflect the utmost credit on him and the United States Army.

I have read this citation to guests on tour while standing at his grave - it is always a struggle to get through in one go without a little lip wobble.

In this post, we give thanks to a man whos quick thinking and leadership undoubtedly saved many of his men.

Visit Freddie Stowers

If you’d like to walk in the footsteps of Freddie or other American soldiers in the First World War, please contact us today so we can help you plan the perfect itinerary.