As most of us know, this year is the 100th Anniversary of the WWI Armistice that gave us two decades of ‘peace’ before WWII. In total, the two World Wars took the lives of 64 men and women from Longworth, Hinton Waldrist and Kingston Bagpuize.
In April, 2011, Rob Belk worked with Jan Kelly, Peter and Janet Keene and others to produce the Villages at War weekend. Rob’s piece of that was the research of our local War Dead and the production of the War Dead Timeline that tells the strategic story of the wars and the individual stories of our war dead. The Timeline was first displayed that weekend – and then in St Mary’s, Longworth, and other locations. Out of this came the Memorial Crescent, in Kingston Bagpuize.
Since then, Rob Belk has added the stories of 12 aircraft and 24 Aircrew who were killed on or over the three villages – and produced one World War Timeline for each of the three villages. Hinton Waldrist have put their Timeline on permanent display in St Margaret’s.
Neither Longworth nor Kingston Bagpuize are able to place their Timelines on permanent display, so Rob is launching a web based solution which contains the three Timelines.
Our Hinton Waldrist World War Timeline tells the story of the two World Wars and the individual stories of our 38 local men and 6 Airmen from far away who were killed right here. Our local men died in many theatres of war – France, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Turkey, Iraq, Waziristan, Burma and several at home, when all seemed safe.
On the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice, this is a fitting reminder that the two World Wars were real and the people were real and they had names and families and hopes for the future – a future they gave for us.
Click on this link to visit the Read Their Stories Web site.