When visiting my mother for the Xmas break, she showed me this picture of her grand-father, Médéric, in his cavalry uniform, taken before the First World War, in 1905. During the war, as an older man, he did not come close to the front lines, but died from a disease caught from the horses he was taking care of. Two other documents I had not seen before were these refugee cards that my grand-parents got after their house in Saint-Lô got destroyed on June 7, 1944.
And this receipt for the tinned rabbit meat packages my grand-mother was sending to a brother-in-law who was POW in Gustrow, Germany, receipt that she kept despite the hardships she faced in the years following the D Day landing.
Archive for cavalry
trip to the past
Posted in Books, pictures with tags cavalry, D Day, Dragons regiment, first World War, French army, Germany, Gustrow, refugees, war prisonner, WW I on January 6, 2019 by xi'anbattle of Agincourt, 600th commemoration [in miniature]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Agincourt, armour, battle, bowmen, cavalry, diorama, England, figurines, France, Henry V, Hundred Years' War, National Museum of Arms and Armours, October 25, tin soldiers, Tower of London on October 25, 2015 by xi'an
For the 600th commemoration of the battle of Agincourt, the National Museum of Arms and Armours [within the Tower of London] has commissioned a diorama of the battle that saw the French nobility decimated by English longbows, muddy fields, their heavy armours, and lust for glory…
The Royal Armouries have a blog describing the construction of this impressive diorama, which measures 4m x 2m and involves 4,400 figurines. And over 1,000 arrows stuck into the ground. Never forget the arrows!
At a personal level, besides a fascination for diorama [that started when I saw a D-Day diorama in one Norman museum as a kid] I had been told after The Accident that cutting some fingers was customary for captured bowmen, but this entry in Wikipedia writes it off as a myth.
