Quote:
Originally Posted by Retlaw
Just before Bill Turner died, he asked me to go through my files, and let him know the true figures. This I did town by town, including pictures and biographies of the men,
Just as I was getting ready to take it to the hospital, his daughter rang to say Bill had died.
I put it away, and not looked at it since.
One of the reasons I have never quoted the true figures, is because of the lurkers, on here, who would just love to know, but rely on other people doing the work.
The figure is a lot more than those being bandied about by the so called Pals experts, one of them rang me last week, asking questions, he got some duff info, which sounded good to him.
Bill will now know, and I know what happened that day.
I've now found the names of 700 men who served in the 11th East Lancs, who are not on pages 212 - 237, in the Accrington Pals book.
As to the so called Pals experts making suggestions as to what should be done for the different Pals aniversaries, those projects have been in the pipeline for near 12 months. I have now got some of my pictures in the Theipval Memorial Museum.
Retlaw.
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So, I'm to take it that the figure of 585 from Martin Middlebrook's "First Day on the Somme" is not accurate. If this is the case, then all of the figures in his appendix on the number of casualites by battallion must be suspect, even though one reviewer called them "definitive." Just wondering if anyone else has done the same painstaking reseach you have done on the Pals for any of the other locally-raised units?