The Bulletin is the in-house magazine of the WFA. It is published three times a year in February/March, June/July and October/November.
As a subscribed member of the WFA, you will be sent your copy by post as soon as it is published. This publication, together with your copies of Stand To! which is also sent to you three times a year, form one of the key benefits of your membership of the WFA.
The Bulletin Editor, Ralph Lomas, will be delighted to receive and consider news items from any source, but preference will always be given to WFA members, and you should state your membership number, name and address on all correspondence.
Contents of Edition 85
Big Push at Trinity School, Nottingham by Rick Stevens - p.2
WFA Education by Martyn Hale and David Seymour also WFA Development by David Tattersfield - p.3
WFA Meeting the Public at York Racecourse by Brian Marsden and Kelmarsh, Northampton by Jane Backhouse - p.4
John Bourne tributes by Peter Simkins and Gary Sheffield - p.5
Commemorating the fallen of the Great War from the County of Essex by Karen Dennis - p.7/8
Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery Daily reflections of the Great War by Annemie Morisse - p.9/12
From Lijssenthoek to Talbot House... and back. A story of headstones, names and an old Visitors' Book by Dries Chaerle & Bertin Deneire - p.13/15
Obituary - Henry Allingham by Matt Lucas and Geoff Bridger - p.16/17
Obituary - Harry Patch by Matt Lucas and Christine Hindle - p.18/19
Obituary - Dawyck Haig by Correlli Barnett, Honorary President, WFA - p.20/21
Dawyck and the historians by George A Webster - p.22
Branch Meetings and Contacts - p.23/26
Branch Lines by Bob Lewis, Martin Willoughby, Bill Fulton, Linda Swift, Stephen McGreal, Derek Bird, Gordon Rae, Doug Potts, Bob Paterson and Len Shurtleff - p.27/32
Letters to the Editor - p.33/36
A story that needs to be told by Graham Parker and Dr Trowles with the assistance of Andrew Thompson - p.37/39
Lancaster School Remembers by courtesy of the Lancaster Guardian - 16/07/09 - p.39
Memorial Officer's Report by Hilary Wheeler - p.39
Memorial Trees at Tylers Green by Derek Bracey - p.40
‘Huppy' to be there - October 1916 by Gloria Siggins - p.41/42
Tabor - One thing leads to another! by Rob Kirk - p. 43
Haig's Appeal Fund by Andrew Brooks - p.44
Mr & Mrs Mellanby's Pilgrimage by Andrew Brooks - p.45
Moina Michael by Andrew Brooks - p.47
Westfield Ceremony 18th July by Courtesy of Guinness Northern Homes - p.47
Front Cover shows: (left to right) Henry Allingham (with Flight Lieutenant Michelle Goodman, awarded Distinguished Flying Cross for her courageous endeavours under fire in Basra), Harry Patch (with Lance Corporal Johnson Beharry, who was given a Victoria Cross after twice risking his life for comrades in Iraq) and Bill Stone (with Marine Mkhuseli Jones, whose actions in Afghanistan won him the Military Cross). Taken on Remembrance Sunday 2008. Copyright Richard van Emden, used with permission.
Featured Article
Dawyck and the Historians by George A Webster
Dawyck Haig, together with his nephew Douglas Scott, made researching Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig at the family seat of Bemersyde as pleasurable as it was rewarding. As the last aspiring biographer of his father to have had the privilege of access to Dawyck, I'd like to say a few words about the debt owed to him, over the decades, by historians of the Great War.
In his obituary of Dawyck Haig, Correlli Barnett has very properly drawn attention to the emergence of the iconoclasts after the death of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig. Dawyck's father's posthumous reputation has been successfully besmirched in the public mind for eighty years through the self-interested publications of the triumvirate of Churchill, Lloyd-George, and Liddell Hart, upon whose coat-tails have hung the execrable, the opportunistic, and the plain unhinged creations of the likes of Alan Clark, Joan Littlewood, and Denis Winter. These were routinely and unquestioningly picked up by, and fixed in, the popular imagination by what Dawyck came to refer to as "the usual chorus of hate from the press". Yet despite the very real pain which many of these caused him, Dawyck Haig continued to the end of his life to operate a gracious open-door policy to those historians who beat a path to his door at Bemersyde.
Dawyck Haig's decision to authorise publication of his father's diaries was against the advice of his father's loyal wartime comrade, Lord Trenchard. "Trenchard," as Dawyck told me, "was certainly wrong and that [publication of the diaries] was what convinced John Terraine to accept my father and his work." Since Terraine's seminal work, there have been eight further biographies, with another from Gary Sheffield due early next year. Towards the end of his life, Dawyck Haig stated that his position had always been that "I never minded military historians' criticisms of my father which were trying to search for truth - so long as they were founded upon the facts." Throughout his life, and with great charm, he took the trouble to direct enquiring historians to those facts, many of which reposed in the papers which his enlightened policy had placed in the public domain. On the watershed that was John Terraine, Dawyck added that, "We were immensely lucky to have had the support of John, who protected my father from the worst attacks."
Dawyck Haig was later to reflect that his experiences as a POW had enabled someone from such a privileged background as his own to live in close proximity with people of different experiences and outlooks to his, and to begin to understand something of how other people had lived their lives. Perhaps for this reason he never thought to try to impose his own conclusions on those historians who consulted him. A good example of this - as well as of Dawyck's puckish sense of humour - is an anecdote related to me by one Haig biographer. When Gerard De Groot was researching his 1988 biography, Douglas Haig 1861-1928, he remarked to Dawyck that as his father had been a carpenter, whilst Dawyck's had been an Earl, this explained the sons having differing perspectives on many issues. Whilst many of De Groot's conclusions on the Field Marshal certainly differed from his own, Dawyck sent a card the following Christmas with a note suggesting that perhaps they could at least agree that this was a season to honour the sons of carpenters!
Over the decades, Dawyck Haig enriched the nation's historical archives and maintained an open door policy to his father's biographers - whether they were ‘for' or ‘against'. Throughout his life he brought honour to his father's name and when necessary defended his reputation as C-in-C of the British Armies on the Western Front with great dignity. The death of this fine gentleman truly marks the passing of an era and the loss to historians of a direct link to the man who led British forces to the greatest victory in their history.
