Please see sub-pages to this page for stories of particular significance to our Byfield and District Members including:

VE Day+75 Members' Memories

The Cross Tree

Byfield's own Walter Smith MM

Byfield's own War Horse

The Veterans' Hearing Fund of the RBL - A Case Study, by Jeremy Wheeler

The Cold War - a letter home by Bernard Tisley

Shades of the Cold War, from an MN R/O’s perspective

The Korean War by Russ Mallace

HMS "Ocean" in the Korean War by Russ Mallace

HMT "Nevasa" by Terry Hoyle

"There's hope for us all" by Terry Hoyle

Gorilla gorilla by Doug Hodson

The Battle of Jutland May 31st 1916 by Russ Mallace 

The Somme, and afterwards...  by Jeremy Wheeler

A true fairy story - of Charles "Snowy" Newman MM... By John Russell BEM

RBL Brittany in 2016

It was refreshing to hear that youngsters ARE interested in what the older generation did way back when. Early in the month of August 2016 social media “went viral” sharing a Facebook post by Ben Lopez, who met 96-year old World War Two RAF veteran Ted Fullerton in his pub The Duke of Cumberland in Cottingham, East Yorkshire.

Ted was wearing his medal ribbons and had dropped-in to his “local” for a pub lunch. Ben went over and asked Ted if he would tell him what the medal ribbons were and how he got them. Ted was deeply moved by Ben’s interest and agreed to Ben giving his memories a wider audience.

Ben’s subsequent post on Facebook was initially for his friends’ benefit but those friends passed-on the story to their friends and so-on. Within hours Ted was receiving goodwill messages (via Ben) from around the world. Ted says those have given him a new lease of life. People even started to send contributions to pay for Ted’s pub lunches into the foreseeable future.