George Medal group awarded GM for gallantry under fire in Iraq when he defused a mutiny by Iraqi troops.
On Monday night at the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire AGM the list of talks for the new season was announced. I am officially listed as making my presentation in September. That is just 59 days away. The time has flown by. I have written a rough script and the first few slides and am currently relearning how to use the Presentation part of my Apache Open Office suite. It’s similar to PowerPoint for those of you who aren’t familiar with it and Open Office is similar to Microsoft, but has fewer features, much lower costs (it’s free) and doesn’t fence you round with a variety of restrictions. I would love the features of PowerPoint, but I prefer the feeling of using Open Office.
We had 14 members attending, which is good for what is universally accepted to be the most boring meeting of the year. Sometimes we have over 20 if the talk looks interesting. Sometimes I fall asleep, so perhaps some meetings are more boring than this. Other societies, from what I hear, have varying memberships. Some are larger and seem a bit more active. Some are smaller, which is a comfort to us as it makes us feel more viable. What is certainly true is that membership of coin clubs is down to about 50% of what it used to be and most of our members are 60 and over. Sometimes well over. there are younger collectors but they tend to use social media.
A pre-war railway specialist who, became a Lt Colonel in the Royal Engineers and was decorated three times for efficiency in feeding troops and Dutch civilians
We had one place available on the committee and, we thought, one person wishing to join. As it turned out someone rang during the afternoon and expressed an interest. One space, two enthusiastic volunteers. What do we do? I’d have accepted both, but we seem to have rules about that. However, as they are both younger than me and both good candidates, I volunteered to step down and make another vacancy. I was planning on stepping down next year after we move so it wasn’t a problem. We now have two new and enthusiastic committee members, which is good.
A railway signalling specialist working for a British firm in Argentina. Decorated with the Military Cross for rescuing a train under shell fire in WW1 and a civilian OBE for services to railway engineering. Both his sons died flying with the RAF in WW2
One of my previous incarnations on a committee was Nottingham Outlaws where I was the Volunteer Coordinator. This is the ungrammatical title given to the person who coordinates the club volunteers, rather than the person who volunteers to coordinate. That’s how I know Rule Number One – never turn a volunteer down.
Anyway – 59 days to go. Just over 8 weeks. I need to research and write approximately ten slides a week so I don’t have time to spend chatting, I’d better get on . . .
DSO, DFC & bar to a pioneering night fighter radar expert. He wrote a book after the war telling of his exploits. As a pre-war actor he was Robert Donat;s understudy and was actually given leave from the RAF to play a Gestapo officer in a film.
The photo at the top originally belonged to a multiply decorated war hero. Then someone got hold of it and used it as the basis for making up a fraudulent group. In fact he had an active service career with the Royal marine Light Infantry lasting about 4 months before being wounded in the battle for Gavrelle windmill in April 1917.
