November 2009

November saw what had been billed as a ‘members’ forum and auction, however, with the large number of items donated it became all auction and no forum! With over 130 lots of books and artifacts our auctioneer for the day, Jim Mackay, had his work cut out selling them all in the time available, but he managed and thanks to his efforts, and of course the generous donation of so many items by branch members, almost £300 was raised for our funds.

October 2009

October brought Charles Messenger and his talk about British awards and honours during the Great War. Although many of us knew something about the subject it soon became very clear that Charles would be filling a great many gaps in our knowledge and an extremely interesting afternoon ensued.

September 2009

In September Essex Branch Chairman, Bill Fulton, traveled all the way to Elgin to tell us about the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow. The talk is made all the better for the fact Bill had a relative who worked on the incredible post-war salvage efforts, and that the Flow is geographically quite near to us and therefore of great interest to many branch members – and to one in particular, Sandra Ross, who was born on Orkney.