Ambulance Train Coat of Arms

In a secondhand book shop the other day, I found a book made up of contributions from the crew of No. 16 ambulance train, which served in France and Belgium. The crew were Quakers, so probably pacifists, and were quite talented. One created a coat of arms for the train. If you look carefully you will see the coat of arms has interesting things in it.  I particularly like the 3 scrubbing brushes, just to the right of Number 16.  Look at the stretchers.  I don't suppose anyone imagined they'd end up as council flat railings, as described in the previous post.

Guess the crew sometimes wished their train did have wings, though.

The motto means something like "in the shadows you find friends"    I hadn't thought about this aspect of working together to help others, but it's probably the only way to deal with the horrors of war.  

Vanessa's Been Searching....

...for WW1 links to Bermondsey.  Much of it has been redeveloped since World War 2, and it's recently changed from a very poor area  into one which is very affluent in parts.   Only in parts though. Away from the fancy coffee shops and gift boutiques of Bermondsey Street and places like it, the Bermondsey of council flats and working class communities is still very much in evidence.   This is what she says about some of the council flat railings that the kids pass by every day.

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In South London, round the blocks of flats, there are lots of fences that like this. These are actually recycled WW1 stretchers which were used in mobile hospitals.

WW1 is harder to 'get into' than the familiar Churchill-Hitler story. It was longer ago and attitudes have changed- people back then were jingoistic and the whole concept of empire is uncomfortable for modern kids. But I recently ran a successful series of workshops about the iron age Britons and Romans (even longer ago!) for 7 and 8 year olds. We had a series of lively debates about whether the Roman occupation was a good or a bad thing. This was really inspiring as it proved to me that even quite young children can put themselves into the mindset of someone living long ago.

I'm really looking forward to opening up the Edwardian era to modern children and hopefully making it stick in their Moshi-Monster-filled heads. I can't wait to read the stories they come up with... if they are not absolutely historically accurate they will at least be funny and thought-provoking!