NEW THIS WEEK – MONDAY 18 MAY 2009

Well Hi and welcome to this week’s new items to Miliblog

Big news to Miliblog this week is that we now have a search facility !!! Pick out the tab at the top and then type in the vehicle type, ie Ford GPW Jeep. Maybe you’d like to see if your old mv is there, then type in your registration number and hit the search button and up it pops. Next new addition is another tab at the top that gives you the latest additions to the site. Now with over 2300 photos available, this makes the serach even easier. Don’t forget you can still use the searches on the right for groups of photos by coutry,age or types. 

Like many others who have an interest in military history know, we are very soon coming up to the anniversary of one of history’s major events, namely the D-Day landings on the beaches of Normandy, or J-Jour as it is known in France. This year sees the 65th anniversary of the landings back on June 6th, 1944. Whether your interest lies in uniforms, vehicles, equipment, aircraft or warships this one day’s anniversary alone covers all of our interests. It was the greatest invasion made in history and probably such a force will never be seen ever again in the future. When we think of this, remember those that took part in this piece of history. Spend a moment to reflect on those that survived and those that paid the ultimate sacrifice. Next time we curse the elderly driver for going to slow and getting in our way or the old codger in the supermarket for dithering about, just remember, they may have taken place in that great adventure, as it was called.

Ok, well I was watching BBC TV Breakfast News this week and a report came from the Imperial War Museum (North), which is in Manchester. It featured some movie film that had been taken in 1945/46 by an amateur movie photographer of a POW (Prisoner of War) camp near Nottingham showing German POWs in the camp. The guy, who had been a soldier at the camp, passed away at Easter this year and had donated his collection to the IWM, who have now put it on display along with other POW items. It got me thinking. I remember back in the late 1970′s, when I first started work, that one of the ladies in the factory used to tell me that she and her school friends used to cycle out from Wombourne, south of Wolverhampton, some 12 miles north to the village of Coven, to see the POWs behind the wire and taunt them.  She could never remember where it was, but the memory of this stuck in my mind. So following the report, I googled ‘Coven POW’ and came accross a most interesting website created by Brett Exton along with Shawn Bohannon. It describes a POW site close to Brett’s home town of Brigend in South Wales with photos and lots of interesting details that you can enjoy reading through. However, he’s also researched all the other POW camps thoughout the UK in WW2 and listed them out in detail. Whatever part of the country you live in, have a look and then find the camp that was local to you. The website is www.islandfarm.fsnet.co.uk

A few more photos have been added this week, including three of an AEC Jones crane taken in Cyprus in the late 1980′s. It was working for a circus loading containers. Still lots more to add to the site, so please pop back and have a look. So you can see the new additions, we’ve worked with our website designers on a page dedicated to new photos this week type of page. Also with the search facility now in place, you can spend many more hours looking through our database of military hardware.

Anyway, hope you all have a great week and to those lucky enough to be going to Normandy, you luck bastards !!!

Cheerio !!!

Simon  

AEC AWD Jones KL10-6 Crane (JK-432)(Cyprus)