The village of Blackness‘s War Memorial lies on a turning on the A 903 down from the main A 904 road into Bo’ness just before the approach to Blackness Castle. Blackness originally served as a port for Linlithgow, when Scottish monarchs used Linlithgow Palace as a main residence.

It’s a square slightly stepped granite pillar on a square base.

Dedication and names. Eight for the Great War, two (below) for World War 2:-

Winchburgh is a village in West Lothian.

Its War Memorial (for Winchburgh and Niddry)  is an unusual one in that it bears a statue of a drummer boy. The statue sits atop a stone cairn on a circular plinth. It seems to have been erected in 2000 (see link above.)

Dedications. The lower plaque contains names indentified later than in the plaque above:-

This one is courtesy of my younger son. Kilchoan is in the Ardnamurchan peninsula. It’s the most westerly village in the UK.

I have never been there. He has though, and knowing my habit for photographing War Memorials kindly took this shot and sent it to me:-

This aspect shows names for the Great War. Names for the Second World War are on the right hand side of the Memorial.

Gateside is a small village in Fife. We pass through it quite often as it on the way between Son of the Rock Acres and our younger son’s house.

Its War Memorial is a Community Hall, opened in 1921 in remembrance of the Great War dead from the village:-

From car park:-

The memorial plaque is on the wall by the entrance door:-

This web page has a photograph of the names of the Gateside dead from both wars on two plaques on an internal wall.

The Hauntings is a sculpture of a soldier, made from scrap metal. From 1/7/23 to 12/11/23 it was in the grounds of The Black Watch Museum in Perth but has since moved on. (The museum, housed in Balhousie Castle is a regular haunt of ours as it has a very good café.)

The sculpture was commissioned for the centenary of The Great War and made by metal sculpture specialists, Dorset Forge and Fabrication, “a combination of the talents of blacksmith Chris Hannam and artist Martin Galbavy.”

Sculpture with Balhousie Castle in background:-

Side view:-

Reverse view. The memorial in the background here I featured in 2019:-

I noted the jerry can on the soldier’s right hip. Jerry cans were a World War 2 phenomenon. Not that that matters.

Huntingdon’s War Memorial is the most prominent feature of the main square (Market Square.)

From this Information Board I found it’s called “The Thinking Soldier.”

Great War and World War 2 Dedications:-

Later Conflicts Dedication:-

Side view:-

Memorial stone in grounds of All Saints Church:-

“Ghost Soldier” in grounds of All Saints Church:-

Pimlico, 1995, 653 p, including ii p Contents, v p List of illlustrations, i p Acknowledgements, ii p Introduction, 32 p Notes and References, plus 19 p Index.

The author is more renowned for his spy novels but has written previous History books on aspects of the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkreig and Battle of Britain,) my reading of which long pre-dated my blogging days. In this volume the cover page promises “an objective look at World War II.”

Deighton splits his book between the main theatres of war starting with “The Battle of the Atlantic,” going on to “Hitler Conquers Europe,” “The Mediterranean War,” “The War in the Air,” “Barbarossa: The Attack on Russia” then “Japan Goes to War” – all of which deal mostly with the early encounters – before concluding with ‘Went the Day Well?’ a short scamper through how they all turned out.

In order to illuminate the Second World War and its origins Deighton delves into earlier History in his start to each section and makes some often overlooked observations.

The pre-Great War British refusal to build new bigger dock yards meant that, individually, its ships were seriously inferior to German ones, especially in regard to using watertight bulkheads to resist being sunk, a difference which revealed itself at the Battle of Jutland. More contentiously Deighton says Germany might well have won the Great War had the US not entered.

(Aside; after the German Spring offensive ran itself out in 1918 when their troops overextended their supply chain and discovered how well supplied the Allies were – especially with wine, but also matériel – they were always on the back foot and defeat became inevitable. How much the US contribution affected this is at least debatable.)

As regards the later conflict he notes that in the 1939-45 war India contributed “the largest volunteer army that history had ever recorded.” (Indian troops made up the bulk of the “British” Army in North Africa.)

In the sea war German gun-laying radar (of which the Royal Navy were largely ignorant) gave the Kreigsmarine surface ships a considerable advantage. Coupled with HMS Hood’s lack of deck armour – another example of that Great War design inferiority – making it vulnerable to plunging fire its sinking was all but inevitable.

To avoid damaging the German economy Hitler wanted short sharp wars; the blitzkrieg technique was employed for that reason. As a result German munitions production was not maximised till after the advance into Russia bogged down, by which time it was too late. Germany had been plentifully supplied by the Soviet Union before June 1941. All its plunder from the invasion of Russia never equalled that earlier provision. That invasion was utterly senseless, but of course ideologically driven. Plus, the planning staff had “wrongly assessed their enemy and formulated a plan that could never have conquered him.”

A statement which may surprise most British (and indeed USian) readers was that “Rommel was not one of the war’s great generals.” In Germany he is thought of as a product of Nazi propaganda. “His fatal flaw was his inability to see the importance of logistics.” While good – exceptional – as a divisional commander Deighton says Rommel needed a superior to keep him under control and make him understand the less glamorous realities of supply and maintenance. Despite his blame of them Italian merchant seamen are described as “nothing less than heroic in their performance” (providing to the Afrika Korps 800 tons per division per day on average.) By contrast “voracious” US armoured divisions in North West Europe required only 600 tons per day including fuel. The Luftwaffe’s parachute army had been all but used up in Crete and so was not available for an attack to deprive the Allies of Malta.

“The war’s decisive battle was won in the factories.” For every ship the Axis built the Allies built ten and there was a crucial German shortage of trucks. German lack of a strategic bomber force meant the Soviet Union’s factories beyond the Urals were safe from harassment. However, the RAF’s belief in strategic bombing as a decisive war winning weapon was a delusion. It wasn’t accurate enough and didn’t demoralise the population.

The shift from coal to oil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had changed the strategic landscape. “It is tempting to depict the Second World War as nothing but a struggle for oil.” In Japan’s case that is undoubtedly true and Deighton stresses the importance of Zhukov’s victory over the Japanese at Khalkin Gol in 1939 in concentrating their efforts away from the far eastern Soviet Union. Indeed, their attack on Pearl Harbor dismayed German troops on the Eastern Front.

In Malaya, British troops were overloaded with equipment – heavy boots, steel helmet, webbing pack on the back, another at the side, gas-mask bag on the chest, all held together by webbing fitted with brass buckles (which if unpolished were punished severely.) Not to mention the ten-pound weight of a Lee-Enfield rifle and bayonet (a rifle not suited to jungle warfare.) This disadvantage, and a certain inability to perceive that a lighter, nimbler Army might not need the roads on which the British were fixated in order to operate, sealed Malaya’s fall.

Blood, Tears and Folly does supply, if not the promised objective look at World War 2 then at least a different one. It stresses the importance of supply and logistics, factors which still determine the outcome of wars.

Pedant’s corner:- “coal, -ammunition and” (no need for that dash before ammunition,) “the Atlantic Blue Ribbon” (Blue Riband,) “ships papers” (ship’s papers,) Hargreaves’ (Hargreaves’s,) “£650 millions,” “£7,435 millions,” “£1,365 millions” (in each case the plural of million is not necessary; the formulation ‘£650 million’ means ‘650 million pounds’. It would be ludicrous to say ‘650 millions pounds’,) “Britain followed suite” (followed suit,) Georges’ (x 4: the final ‘s’ in this French name is not pronounced so the possessive demands an apostrophe ‘s’, ‘Georges’s,) “the mixed bag of … were a far cry” (the mixed bag … was a far cry,) Menzies’ (Menzies’s,) “escaped to Britan and become a rallying point” (became,) “a small collection of transports were scraped together” (a small collection … was scraped together,) Polikarov (Polikarpov,) Junkers’ (Junkers’s,) Flak (in the middle of a sentence; ‘flak’,) “the Ukraine” (just Ukraine.) In 1900 Russian and the USA were producing” (Russia and.) “Gas pumps” (Petrol pumps,) “and of and” (and of.) Goebbels’ (Goebbels’s,) Keyes’ (Keyes’s.)

Euston is a small village in Suffolk, about two miles south of Thetford. The War Memorial is a Celtic style cross in a green area by the side of the A1088.

Dedications and names. Sadly the names were obscured by the wreaths but they can be found here:-

Penguin, 2013, 269 p.

I realised at the end of this after seeing the publisher’s blurb at the back that this is a sequel (of sorts) to a previous Barker novel, Life Class, which features some of the same characters.

The main focus here is on Elinor Brooke, who in childhood formed a very close relationship with her brother Toby, on his part chiefly because she was a kind of replacement for his dead twin. In 1912, Elinor gets a place at The Slade Art School and while studying there she meets Kit Neville and Paul Tarrant who will both be important to the novel’s plot.

The Great War is the pivot of the story (as it was for all of those who matured in time for its trajectory to direct their lives.) Toby, Kit and Paul all join up and Elinor sends time worrying about them all – but especially Toby, even though in its early stages she and Paul had become lovers. His enlistment put a wedge between them, though, and their communications become sparse.

Most of the tale is seen from Elinor’s viewpoint, including various of her diary entries, but increasingly scenes begin to relate more of Paul’s experiences.

Elinor’s fears are confirmed when the telegram arrives with the news that Toby is “Missing. Believed Killed.” The parcel containing Toby’s effects, smelling as it does of the stench of the trenches, is an added trauma. Her parents withdraw into themselves and Elinor begins to fixate on whether Toby is really dead and if so how it happened. She moves into Toby’s room (thus giving Barker her title: and a metaphor for Elinor’s retreat into denial.)

When Paul is wounded Elinor is reluctant to visit but as she wants him to contact Kit, who was in Toby’s regiment, she eventually does so. Kit himself suffers a horrific facial wound and is sent to a surgical hospital for treatment. When Elinor visits him he refuses to give any detail about Toby’s death but while there she encounters her old art tutor Professor Tonks who enlists her to help draw the progression of facial reconstructions as successive surgeries take place on the patients.

Barker has of course previously examined the Great War in her “Regeneration” trilogy. Her writing is immersive and her knowledge of the time lends this tale a great wealth of incidental detail. Another Slade contemporary, Catherine, has German ancestry. She and her family suffer the ostracism enemy aliens – even those born in the UK – were subjected to at the time. The horrors and exigencies of life in the trenches are shown matter-of-factly but unflinchingly. The psychology of it all is convincing enough and Kit’s memories of Toby as eventually related to Paul reveal him to be somewhat different from Elinor’s impression of him, not treating the men as kindly as he should have, a foreshadowing of the revelation about the way in which Toby died.

This is vintage Barker. She rarely disappoints.

Pedant’s corner:- “the whole place must have shook” (must have shaken.) “Somewhere near by” (Somewhere nearby,) “that’s one less to worry about” (one fewer,) putties (puttees – used later,) “a cluster of white-coated doctors and nurses were supervising the unloading of the wounded” (a cluster … was supervising,) “coming up the steep lane that lead from the Embankment” (that led from,) “oblivious of the city” (oblivious to the city.)

Travelling south from Oxborough through Norfolk I spotted this at the junction of the A1035 and A 135. A pillar surmounted by a crucifix on a square base:-

Reverse view. Names for West Tofts and Cranwich:-

The main inscription is to the Lynford Estate:-

Names for Mundford, West Tofts and Cranwich:-