The speaker at our Monthly Meeting on Wednesday 22 October 2025 was our own member Rob Kirk, who has had a distinguished career in television journalism. His talk was entitled “Jaw Jaw about War War”, and dealt with some of the less well know aspects of World War 1.

It started with a relative of his, Ernest Sneath, who had been one of the casualties in The Retreat from Mons. The early stages of the war were different from the popular conception of World War 1 as a war fought in trenches. The early stages were much more mobile than the trench stages which came later.

Whilst searching for the grave of his relative, Rob came across an early World War 1 tank buried in earth but surprisingly well preserved. That launched his interest in tanks, and Deborah the Tank became the next focus of his talk. He had managed to track down the crew members, all of which had perished, and eventually the tank was excavated and found a new home. The current descendants of the crew were then invited to a ceremony to celebrate the tank’s restoration in a museum in Flesquieres. After Deborah, we found out about Damon II and how it was reborn.

Rob’s next focus landed on the Lochnagar Crater located between Albert and Pozieres, where a very large quantity of explosives had been left by the British in a mine tunnel under the road used by the German army, and was exploded to devastating effect when the German army passed over the location. Rob had become so involved in researching the families of the soldiers that he ended up publishing a magazine “Lochnagar Crater Today” over a number of years. Rob had also joined the Friends of Lochnagar Crater who worked on maintaining the location and enabling visitors to see the crater safely.

Rob’s talk finished with his researches into the Kohima Epitaph which had changed its wording over the years, but to our surprise had originated well before World War 2, to many people’s surprise. There were details of other families, and their connections to events and locations, and the resting places of other family members, both in England and in France and Belgium.

Rob also provided a number of web sites on the internet where reliable military records can be found. The list included:

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (https://www.cwgc.org/),
Lives of the First World War at the Imperial War Museum Website (https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/)
The Great War Forum (https://www.greatwarforum.org/),
The Buckinghamshire Remembers Website (https://buckinghamshireremembers.org.uk/) and
The Guide to the Great War (http://www.greatwar.co.uk/)

This was a fascinating talk, demonstrating how a hobby can become totally absorbing, and which led to many questions from the floor.

Our next Monthly Meeting is our Annual Creativity Event on Wednesday 26 November 2025 which will also be supporting Macmillan Cancer Support.