Latest Projects & News
Here you will find the latest paintings and various projects I will be working on that are not yet quite completed. I will also be adding where possible information regarding uniforms and insignia relating to those paintings, together with any background historical information.
Latest Posts
Latest Projects
Private Edward Dickens, 1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment, Gonnehem, April 1918
Edward Dickens Brief Time In The Military
The Service record for Edward Dickens no longer exits, being one of those destroyed during bombing in the Second World War. We, therefore, do not know exactly when he enlisted and was shipped over to France to join his unit, the 1st Battalion Hampshire Regiment. His service number was 42659.
What we do know, from the units War Diary, is that a new batch of replacements joined up with the unit a couple of weeks before Edward died of his wounds on 23rd April 1918. He may well have been one of these. He had been taken to No. 23 Casualty Clearing Station, which unit was based in the grounds of the Chateau de Lozinghem, in the village of the same name. He is buried in Lapugnoy CWGC Cemetery, less than a mile away from the hospital.
Private Nicholas Dowling, 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards, Boesinghe, Ypres, 1917
My latest commission coincidentally again has an Irish connection, this time with The Irish Guards. Nicholas Dowling joined the Irish Guards and was in France between December 1916 and August 1917, when he was wounded and transferred to the Labour Corps with which unit he saw out the rest of the war. Although no records exist of the fact, family tradition has it that being a good shot he was a Lewis Gunner. I have therefore decided to show him thus, carrying his Lewis gun before the ruins, as they were by then, of Boesinghe Chateau, the base of the 2nd Battalion Irish Guards, in July 1917.
You can read more about Dowling here
Sergent Georges Brodel, 73e Régiment d'Infanterie, Aire-sur-la-Lys, France, 1908
Here I am working on a painting of a local man to where I now live. Georges Brodel was born in Aire-sur-la-Lys on 27th November 1886. His parents Jules and Sophie ran a café in the Grand Place in Aire at number 40.
He was recruited in the class of 1906 aged 20 at Saint Omer, matricule 2438, and was posted to the 73rd Régiment d’Infanterie. At the time he was recorded as living in Béthune. He served until 1911, having volunteered for two extra years service. He was recalled to the army with the general mobilisation of 1914, with the same rank of sergeant-major and served throughout the war, fighting at Verdun, the Somme and the battles in Flanders 1917-18. He was wounded in 1916. His unit was awarded the Croix de Guerre, and thus entitled to wear the fourragière of that decoration, and he was mentioned in despatches and was inscribed in the Livre d’Or of Verdun of soldiers who fought at Verdun.
After the war he worked as an accountant in the ceramic factory in Aire. The second World War saw him active in the Resistance in the Sylvestre Farmer group. He died 9th February 1955.
