NEWS

20 July 2010 – Added Prisoner of War article

19 June 2010 - An estimated three to four hundred people were in attendance at Givenchy-Lès-La Bassée on 19 June for the unveiling ceremony of the Tunnellers' Memorial. A brief report on a wonderful and superbly organised ceremony can be found at the links below. It was a very special day in commemoration of the tunnellers’ that will live long in the memory of all those that were present. Representatives from at least three branches of the WFA were present at the ceremony which was very pleasing to see.
 
A BBC Wales Today report on the ceremony is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10371047
 
Pictures and video will be added to the Tunnellers Memorial website http://www.tunnellersmemorial.com/Default.htm in due course.
 
http://jeremybanning.co.uk/blog/
http://www.forumeerstewereldoorlog.nl/viewtopic.php?t=22518
 
30 March 2010 - Added Issue No. 5 of The Dugout newsletter and updated Personal Inscriptions article
 
17 March 2010 - Branch member Victoria Burbidge is the British Historian and Representative for the Association Fromelles-Weppes - Terre de Mémoire 14-18. She worked with author and historian, Peter Barton, to extract from the Red Cross lists the names of some of the British and Australian men killed during the Battle of Fromelles in 1916.
 
On 17th March, 2010 the British and Australian governments announced that 75 of the soldiers killed at the Battle of Fromelles and subsequently recovered from the Pheasant Wood mass grave had been positively identified. Sadly no British soldiers could be named at this stage.
 
While they could not be named individually, three British soldiers were confirmed to be among the 250 soldiers recovered from the mass graves at Pheasant Wood and 128 were confirmed to have served the Australian Army. The remaining 44 are, for the time being, classified as 'unknown'.
 
BBC reporter Robert Hall talks to Victoria about the significance of the announcement in the following two clips:
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8572527.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8572643.stm
 
Further information on the First World War burial pits discovered at Fromelles is available at http://www.cwgc.org/fromelles/
 
15 March 2010 - Added Branch Battlefield Tour 2010 - Draft Itinerary v1.0 in Events 2010
 
15 February 2010 - Added Sopwith Aircraft of the Great War in Members Articles
 
27 January 2010 - Branch website is launched.