The talk on Zimbabwe has had a knock-on effect as we now find we have somebody in our midst - whose identity will be revealed in due course - who had a great, great, great grand father (I hope I got the number of 'greats' right) who was a surgeon in Wellington's army. I do hope we will be allowed to cover this story as I would love to put that together on a DVD or memory stick, and promise I will resist the temptation to show pictures of the interior of a surgeon's tent after a battle.
Another good story is that among our members we have one whose family were responsible for the administration and upkeep of Hollybrook Cemetery, Southampton, for many years, and they lived on site. From what I have heard this promises to be a fascinating story I know our members will want to hear, so I will have a word with the boss (The Rev. Robert) and see where we can slot that one in.
The programme now looks like this:
February: The history and work of SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association)
This is being presented as there are people in our area who qualify for assistance from SSAFA, but are probably not aware of it. We hope our presentation will help spread the word.
March: The Mulberry Harbour's of WW2, in the construction of which it was Southampton who played the leading role. This talk was originally scheduled for January but had to be postponed due to the indisposition of the speaker.
April: The Story of Ordnance Survey. The brilliant organisation whose head quarters are right here in Southampton. I was amazed and greatly impressed to learn from a TV programme that a few years ago an exercise was carried out using the very latest equipment to check on the accuracy of measurements carried out - what was it, a couple of hundred years ago - using compass bearings, measuring chains, and good old fashioned arithmetic as they built up a pattern of measured triangles covering the whole of the UK, from which the Ordnance Survey maps were constructed. And what did the highly scientific instruments of the 21st century show? If you don't already know I think you can guess, and our speaker will be telling us more about that, although it should be noted he was not one of those who tramped the land with a measuring chain all those years ago.
May: The first Annual General Meeting, for which notices will be sent out to all registere members by the end of February, The meeting will be preceded by a slide show of what we have done during the past year.
Members of the public are welcome at this meeting, but only registered members will be allowed to vote.
A note about 'Registered Members':
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Upon completion, an 'Application for Membership' form it is submitted by the Secretary (That's me) to the committee for their approval. Needless to say it would be a very rare thing for the committee to reject an application, such is the high calibre of our members. No membership fee is charged by our Society simply an invitation at our meetings to make a small donation towards running costs
June:
Perhaps the story of that great, great grand dad who served in Wellington's army.
Perhaps some anecdotes and a good story about Hollybrook Cemetery, Southampton
Then again, we have another member who has a good story to tell about hiding and moving to safety Jewish people during WW2.
At the AGM in May we will be asking people if they are getting the sort of programme they wanted when they completed a questionnaire on the subject in March 2011, the answers to whcih have been our guide to date. We have a lot of new members since then, so time to get an update on what is wanted.
Oh, and by the way - we have two 'field trips' planned, one in June to the western part of the New Forest, and one in September to Portsmouth Dockyard. We hire a coach for these outings and a highly essential element of them is to ensure an interesting pub is handy, one that serves a good lunch.
JohnG
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