There but not there 'Tommy' figures

[Newportnobby]

I know many members of the forum care deeply about our forces service personnel so hope you know about the small figure available of the many 'Tommy' figures appearing around the UK.
For less than the price of a bogie wagon, your money will be well used.
This is a limited number offer........

https://shop.therebutnotthere.org.uk/products/tommy

[Newportnobby]

In case anyone is interested the last time I heard they had sold 42,000 figures raising £1.3 million for forces charities. Thank you to any forum member who purchased one.

[guest311]

now sold 42,001 

[Newportnobby]

He has arrived...........



The plastic base has a slot he stands in.

[GroupC]

Looks great, I like it a lot. Are you having him engraved? Will be getting one in due course.

[Newportnobby]

I don't think he'll be engraved unless I can find the name of a relative who fell in WW1, but he is currently in pride of place in my lounge window.

[guest311]

I don't think he'll be engraved unless I can find the name of a relative who fell in WW1, but he is currently in pride of place in my lounge window.

perhaps when mine arrives it will give me the impetus to research my family tree in more detail, and possibly find a relevant name to have engraved.

otherwise, perhaps a simple

"for all of those who have no known grave"

[Athronydd]

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website is a valuable resource.

[guest311]

my figure arrived yesterday, a lot quicker than the 6 weeks quoted when I ordered it.

it almost seems a sacrilege to remove it from the presentation box it arrived in.

I spoke to the guy at the Timsons at our local Tescos yesterday, and confirmed that he could engrave a metal plaque to add to the figure base.  unfortunately his machine cannot engrave on the clear base, but no doubt some branches can.

so, now I need to go through the family tree, and identify which grandparents, or their siblings, died in the war to end all wars.

was our family lucky, or did it lose many members ?
I was reading yesterday about the 'pals' battalions, and the devastating effect their loses had on close knit communities.

what do I do if more than one relative died, I guess the only thing would be to order more figures, how could you chose which one to commemorate ?

my father lost both his brothers in the last war, I wonder how many off our family tree fell in the Great War.

what a pity that charities need to look after our casualties from our recent wars, where the government and politicians seem to be happy to send out men and women to war, but not honour the committment to support those who return.

[Newportnobby]

I have discovered a relative, one Alfred Lucas who died in service in the Royal Navy in WW1. He hailed from Attercliffe, Sheffield so now I need to find out more about the chap.

[GroupC]

Our family has so far found out about four ancestors who all served in WW1. All died.

Two were of wounds, close to the end of the war in 1918, and they rest in the same cemetery despite not serving together.

One also died earlier in 1918.

The other died, as far as we can tell, very shortly after 0730 on 1 July 1916 at the Lochnagar Crater. One of a "chums" battalion decimated in the first wave of the Battle of the Somme. He has no known grave so is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial.

However, one of these was a stretcher bearer and won the MM for acting under heavy fire and in no man's land. And, unbelievably, a few weeks later he did exactly the same thing again and was awarded a bar to his MM.

Good Lord. Is all that sobering or what. Makes our lives and talk about little trains a bit trivial really.

Proud of them all; none is forgotten.

As to which relative to "remember" with a figure, perhaps a good idea is to get one figure to represent them all (and all the millions of unrelated others), and an engraved name block - https://shop.therebutnotthere.org.uk/products/name-blocks -  for each individual. That's probably what I'm going to do.