End of October 1914 one hundred and twenty wounded Belgian soldiers arrived at Weymouth station on a Red Cross train from Southampton. They were met by the 5th Dorset Voluntary Aid Detachment who oversaw their transfer from carriage to waiting transport and onto Weymouth’s Sanatorium where they were to undergo treatment for wounds that ‘told only too plainly that they had been singled out for attention from the German heavy guns.’
Tag: military
Tommy’s Christmastide in Barracks and Forts.
It is Christmas morning and the orderly men have fallen in to carry the rations to the cook-house, where the “Roast Beef of Old England” is destined to frizzle in a friendly spirit with turkeys, chickens, hams, and-but here we pause as dinner is not yet served.
History Repeats; Soldiers & Pandemics
A dread sound that she had heard too often before. The clip-clopping of horse’s hooves on the cobblestones and the beat of muffled drums. Coming into view along the harbour-side is yet another funeral procession. There are sometimes three or four a day. The horses with their black plumes pulling a gun-carriage which bears a coffin. The Military band is playing The Dead March in subdued tones and all the drums are muffled in black crepe.
Bands and Bells; Weymouth’s Christ Church Gets Ringing. Royal Madras Fusiliers.
Weymouth, it appears, despite being a town of such pretensions and possessing for churches’ had been ‘lacking altogether a peal of bells.
Sunday Morning Bargains: WWI Aerial Torpedoes & the Boys Own Annual
If I get chance I just love a leisurely mooch around our local car boot for items, mainly things that relate to my interests, local history, but in particular, since having discovered Weymouth’s military past, I’ve become fascinated by life in town for the regular Tommy. Sometimes I come away from my Sunday perambulations empty…
Sandsfoot Castle; From Castles to Cattle and Cafes.
So used are we to enjoying the immaculately kept gardens and romantic ruins of Sandsfoot Castle that it’s sometimes easy to forget it was a full on coastal defences military site, dating right back to Henry VIII’s time. A castle complete with its newly formed coastal artillery gunners (the beginnings of a British full time…
Confessions of a Military Bookaholic
I love an old book, particularly those from the 19th century period, which not surprisingly is what I tend to write about. Not necessarily military either, but if they contain information all to the good. They are filled with the most glorious illustrations, not just those to enhance the stories or articles but also their…
Why the ‘Nutcrackers’ Are So Called. Stationed at Weymouth’s Red Barracks 1860.
Originally posted on TALES FROM AROUND THE VICTORIAN WORLD.:
(A nice bit of Victorian blood and gore for the littlun’s! ) Taken from ‘Little Folks a Magazine for the Young’ dated 1890. ‘The famous regiment of Buffs, used also to be known as the 3rd Foot, once rejoiced for a while in the nickname of…
Give a Soldier a Football…History of the British Army and Sport
Sport, especially football, seems to have played a major role in a soldiers life, they took it seriously…and I mean VERY seriously! A snippet here taken from The Navy & Army Illustrated of 1899 gives us a taste of a few British army history facts concerning soldiers and sport. It describes the team of the…
Nothe Fortifications and the 18th corps Royal Engineers; Military history of Weymouth.
The pre 1850’s Nothe headland was a very different place to the one we know nowadays, but it was still very popular with both locals and the visiting elite. Joseph Russell Tompkins in an article from the Dorset Year Book of 1923 builds a wonderful early Victorian image of this headland; ‘the Nothe was quite free…
NOTHE FORT AND BEYOND... 