Down to the museum tonight and three short talks on aspects of WW1 history. There is always something new to be extracted from talks, and in this case I came away knowing that the Germans only built 20 tanks in the war but captured over 100 of ours and used them against us. Strange, when you think how keen they were on them in the next war. We seem to have scrapped most of them after the war. The Imperial War Museum had one but scrapped it in 1922 and the Americans had one but scrapped it in 1942. That leaves just one survivor, which is in Australia. With hindsight it seems a strange way to treat an historic vehicle, but I know we also scrapped several of our own in WW2 as we needed the steel.
Julia’s grandfather was a tank crewman in the Great War and survived without a scratch, only to be badly injured in the Coventry Blitz as an ARP Warden, as I’m sure I have mentioned before.
The one that should have been the most interesting talk turned out to be tinged with modern politics. Now, I don’t mind parallels being drawn, but sneering at the people of 1914 for interning enemy aliens seems a bit rough. It’s easy to be wise in hindsight. Anyway, he clearly hadn’t done all the background research that I have when researching medallions and enamel badges – no mention of nationality legislation, or the Anti-German League, amongst other things. There are great gaps in my knowledge, as I am always aware when listening to specialists, but it just shows how much you can learn as you potter about picking up snippets of information here and there.
To make it even better I had another acceptance today, which rounded things off nicely.
Robin. I went for a couple of old favorites tonight.