LAC Laurence Murdock, RAFVR

Photographs:

(Top): Headstone of Laurence Murdock and his parents
[LAC Murdock died 22 April 1946]
(Bottom): Memorial vase for Larry from his pals

 [Whitehaven Cemetery, Cumbria]
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Josephine Hoogstede 1921-2012

It is with great sadness that I inform you that our Josephine passed away yesterday, 29 January. Older members will remember that this brave and lovely lady made many contributions to the BBC WW2 People's War archive under her nom de plume Odyssey, all of which can be found here


Listening to the forbidden BBC in Holland in 1942.

Holocaust Memorial Day

The BBC broadcast this on January 27.

The founder of the Holocaust Survivors' Centre in London, Judith Hassan OBE, spent her whole life, or almost, working with survivors. I am honored to have been able to meet her, and her family, when she was only starting it. Her work is wonderful, and so are the people interviewed in that program.

For more information about this, check here. It is the only place of this kind in Britain, and I wish we had one in France, where psychological support of survivors and their descendants started much later. Food and shelter, and even a job and a family weren't quite enough to soothe them, contrary to what was believed in the fifties.

Wartime Heroes & Heroines of Cleator Moor

Photographs:
(Top): Front page of the Cleator Moor 'Roll of Honour'
(Bottom): Dedication of the 'Roll of Honour' 

Remembering 'The Fallen' of Cleator Moor, Cumbria.

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'The Windermere Boys'

Grasmere near Windermere in central Lakeland.
The green and pleasant land that is the English Lakeland

'The Windermere Boys' were young Jewish survivors of the Holocaust of WW2. After the end of the war they came from the horrors of the death camps to this green and pleasant land. There was a life worth living after all. 

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Abbot W.D. Hurley, Douai Abbey (1857 - 1940)

Photographs (Top to bottom):
1. War memorial and church 
St Joseph's Frizington Cumbria
2. St Mary's R,C, Church, Cleator (c.1900) 
The WW1 war memorial was dedicated by Abbot Hurley
3. Calvary & burial vault, St Mary's, Cleator (c. 1945)
Abbot Hurley was buried here on 31.12.1940
4. Calvary & burial vault, St Mary's, Cleator (2012)

Photographs 2 & 3 courtesy of:
The Talbot Library, UCLAN, Preston, Lancashire

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Died in an Italian General Hospital

Photographs: 

1. Driver Walter McCartney, RASC 

Died of illness at Milan General Hospital, Italy 
[Photograph courtesy of 'The Whitehaven News']

2. Driver Walter McCartney's Headstone 

Milan War Cemetery, Italy (Grave VI. A. 1)
[Photograph courtesy of Martin from Canada (WW2 Talk)

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Wartime events at St Mary's Parish, Cleator

1. Dean Frederick Cuthbert Clayton, O.S.B.
Parish Priest of St Mary's, Cleator during WW1 & WW2

2. Bust of Father Frederick Cuthbert Clayton, O.S.B.
Parish Priest of St Mary's, Cleator during WW1 & WW2  

3. Standing on the steps of St Mary's, Cleator are (left to right):
Dean F.C. Clayton, Abbot I.S. Mooney, Father F.K. McCann) 

4. View of Dent Fell, Cleator
(From the site of the former St Mary's school)

5. The Benedictine clergy vault, St Mary's churchyard:
Abbot Hurley, Dean Clayton and Fathers McCann & Aspinwall
(Abbot David Hurley was interred on 31 December 1940)

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"To the Men of Muncaster"

1. Ordinary Telegraphist Gilbert Todd, R.N. 
First Muncaster casualty of WW2 (HMS Royal Oak)
[Photograph courtesy of 'The Whitehaven News']

2. Muncaster War Memorial, Ravenglass
Dedication: "To the Men of Muncaster"

3. (Detail): Names of 'The Fallen' of WW1

4. (Detail): Names of 'The Fallen' of WW2

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____________________________________________

"In our hearts he will live forever"

Stoker W.J. Carruthers, R.N. (HMS Fidelity)

Photographs (Top to bottom):

1. Stoker William James Carruthers, R.N.
Presumed drowned 01.01.1943
Lost on HMS Fidelity

2. Cleator & Trumpet Terrace War Memorial, Cumbria
[Home village of Stoker W.J. Carruthers]

3. Detail: WW2 casualties of Cleator (1939 - 1945)
[Stoker W.J. Carruthers is the 3rd name listed]

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