edit:2015 replaced most of the photos Hello everyone I'm back. Thanks to the DNS playing up I posted these on Saturday night when I got back but I was on the ghost site and only I could see them. The good folks on WWIIForum have seen them , now it's your turn. The then pictures all come from Saul David's book Churchill's Sacrifice of the Highland Division. Here is Rommel and Gen. Fortune after 51st Highland Div surrendered at St. Valery-en-Caux, June 1940. Then my daughter as Rommel, me as Gen. Fortune and the boys as the British Officers. Notice how buildings in background are in the same place between our shoulders. edit: click pics to make bigger
Here is the French Memorial on the opposite cliff to the 51st Highland Division one. edit : I seem to have lost/deleted the photo since 2007. It's not on the disc with the others from the trip there.
51st Div Memorial. It was in this area that to escape the Germans some British soldiers tied rifle slings together to make ropes to drop down the cliffs, some died as in the dark they didn't know if the rope was long enough. The cliffs are very high as you'll see here.
Good pics, Owen. Once again, y'all who live around the history are making me jealous. Your daughter looks much more attractive than the Desert Fox. The boys and you, well if you had uniforms on...dead ringers.
The Franco-British Cemetery. This was a lovely spot, a sunny day too was nice as rest of that week was rather wet. edit: again had more photos than this , these only 2 I have on disc.
Inland now to Cany-Barville, a Vickers Mark VIB of Lothians crashed into this house. edit: have lost the photos I took of same view in 2007. Here's GoogleStreetView of it. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@49.785939,0.632027,3a,75y,156.65h,98.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s4ApvzwFhe2CKtJShzRrhog!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Exactly, the French had surrendered, the Highlanders wanted to go on fighting but a tank had parked outside my HQ and called for me to give up the fight, I'm now of to an Oflag for 5 years.
Nice pics, Owen. Thanks for posting them. Dave (you didn't happen to take any close-ups of the French graves did you, by any chance?)
DOUBLE LOL, Owen, your Rommel-style shot is fun like hell ) Your children might will be most hardened WW2-related people in future all-over UK )
Only dragging this thread up again because I forgot there is a "then " photo in the Official history. HyperWar: The War in France and Flanders, 1939-1940 (UK Military Series) [sharedmedia=core:attachments:138647]
From The History Of The 51st Highland Division 1939-1945 by JB Salmond. The Unveiling of the Memorial at St Valery - en -Caux on the 10th Anniversary of the battle, 10th June 1950
Rommel himself was a keen photographer - he took THIS shot of his own men when they reached the Channel under those same cliffs...
Stained Glass Window A gift from the people of the Highlands of Scotland to the town of St Valery en Caux, commemorating the combined action of 1940 against the superior forces of Rommel and the eventual liberation of the town in 1944 The window shows a landscape relating to the town and harbour during the action of 1940 and subsequent liberation in 1944 Regards Verrieres