Mission Accomplished

Walk to the Wall

5th June 2011

Yesterday the BHX Combined Service Veterans walked from Birmingham Airport to the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas, a distance of 25 miles all in aid of HomeFront Forces.

The event was organised by Lee Bradshaw Honorary Secretary of the Association and as well as veterans also included friends and colleagues from the Airport and friends from twitter.

The walking party left the airport in high spirits at 6.45am and the weather was perfect, as it was a dry, clear day. The back up team of supporters and first-aiders followed and stopped at agreed locations to provide snacks and drinks and first aid, mainly to sore, tired, blistered feet.

At 8.45 am Lee was interviewed on BBCWM Andrew Peach Show to talk about the challenge and how the group was progressing.

Later in the day Lee received a telephone call of support along with a generous donation from local MP John Hemming. At 12.30 pm the group were able to stop at John’s bungalow and received great hospitality and some more first aid.

At this point the group had the last eight miles to conquer before they would reach Alrewas and the welcoming party of Veteran Supporters, Family and also twitter friends.

The last eight miles were harder the sun was out the feet were suffering but the group stayed focused and were gratefully of the support teams encouragement over the last few hard miles.


At just after three the BHX Veterans reached Alrewas and the welcoming party it was then time to reflect and lay wreaths of remembrance. The group fell silent and were lost in their own thoughts.

HomeFront Forces is overwhelmed by the effort of the BHX Veterans and friends in raising awareness and funding to help the site to continue to develop.

It isn't too late to donate and support by going to our Just Giving Page

and find out more about the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas

Walk the Wall

Walk the Wall
Birmingham Airport to Alrewas
June 5th 2011


On 5th June 2011, fourteen members and friends of BHX Combined Services Veterans Association will walk from Birmingham Airport to the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas to raise funding for HomeFront Forces. They will cover 23 miles, many carrying a full army pack weighing 35 pounds. On their arrival children will lay a wreath at the Basra Memorial Wall.

HomeFront Forces was established in December 2009 to support the estimated 175,000 children in the UK with a parent in the armed forces.

In October 2011 Britain will have had troops in Afghanistan for ten years. A generation of children has grown up with parents on frequent operational tours. The effects of separation have been shown in recent studies to cause a range of anxiety and behavioural problems. HomeFront Forces service is being developed to enable children to be in control of communication with their deployed parent.


Lee Bradshaw Honorary Secretary of the BHX Combined Services Veterans is marching with the veterans and has given support and encouragement to HomeFront Forces since following them on Twitter.

Anna Matthews, founder of HomeFront Forces says “Lee has been an amazing supporter of HomeFront Forces and has already helped at a number of events. We are overwhelmed by the support of Lee and all the BHX Veterans. We are reliant on funding to develop the project further”


http://www.justgiving.com/HomeFrontAnna

Valentines : The Way It Was

The Way It Was
It is 1943,the middle of the Second World War. Hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women are fighting across the world from North Africa to the Far East. At home their families are in constant danger from air raids .Everyone is anxious for news of loved ones.

There are, however, serious difficulties. E-mails, texts and mobile phones are many years in the future. Hand written letters are the only means of keeping in touch and these take several weeks to arrive. They are sometimes lost if the plane carrying them is shot down. There are heartbreaking occasions when letters continue to arrive, long after the writer has been killed.

I met a girl very briefly and found that we both liked the same things. Unfortunately I was posted to North Africa before I could say I loved her.


I wrote to tell her and her reply took five weeks to reach me ! She was cautious at first, but, in the two and a half years we were apart, we exchanged 675 letters and were married three weeks after I returned, Our marriage lasted 60 years until she died in 2006.

A letter written by someone you love is so much more personal than an e-mail or text. We kept all our letters and they have now been published in a book. The actual letters are in the Imperial War Museum where anyone can see them.


Tony Ross.

Tony's book can be found at the link below:

Dear Joan Love Letters from the Second World War

Also

Tony Ross gave an interview on
BFBS TV about his book

Loveminimine

My name is Jo and my husband is currently serving in the Royal Navy. I recently started my own business called Love Mini Mine, where I makepersonalised comfort dolls. The Love Mini Mine dolls were created as a means to comfort my own children when their Dad was away andthey were designed to help them understand that Daddy loves them and is always thinking of them, even when hecan’t be with them.

Why did this all start? When my daughter was born, my husband went away for 7½ months. When he left, our daughter couldn't even roll over. When he came back, she was a walking, talking toddler! When he came home, she pointed to him and shouted out "Daddy." We couldn't believe that she recognised him! Whilst he was away, she used to give a goodnight kiss, every night, to a photo of him that was in her bedroom - it was that photo that helped her remember her Dad.

Sometime later, my husband went away again and I got to thinking of the photo my daughter used to kiss and how our kids felt when their Dad left. After a bit more of a think, the first dolls were born! My daughter and son cuddled their dolls every night to go to sleep. Happy or sad, they cuddled the doll! It was lovely to see them be able to be close to their Dad, even though he was hundreds of miles away. The dolls are a little something that helps our children get through those times when allthey wanted was a hug from their old Dad.

It’s been nearly three years since I made the first doll for my son, (it’s a bit soggy round the edges now!). I work from home, which is great so I can still fit my work around my family life. The dolls have continued to be a big hit with my kids and everyone who has one loves them!

You can visit me on my website www.loveminimine.co.uk and follow me on Twitter and Facebook page ‘Love Mini Mine.’

I hope the dolls can comfort your family, like they do mine!

Jo x

Blog from a daddy out in Afghanistan

Thankyou to Louise Fetigan for allowing us to reproduce the blog placed on the
mydaddyisasoldiertrek blog.

What's it like to be away from your family? That’s really hard to ask and put into words the answer. Even though this is something we as soldiers do and I have done many deployments including Kosovo, Iraq, Cyprus and previously Afghanistan, I am on my sixth tour now since our daughter was born, it does not get any easier I can tell you that and you don’t get used to it.

Something changes when you are away, a part of your wall disappears and you become vulnerable, you miss things that are important to your family, Christmas, birthdays, school plays and parents evenings, things people take for granted in a normal life. Life at home can’t stop and my Louise then becomes Mother, Father, friend, taxi driver! and everything else... the strain that happens when I go away can be felt on the phone and in the letters that are written which makes it even harder for me when I'm away as all you want to do is be there and make things better for them.

I'm so happy that Madison has found something to channel her energy into and I cannot express how proud I am of her, it brings a tear to my eye when I see her on the news or hear her voice on the radio.

I believe that this HELP for HEROES trek that she is going to undertake is going to be hard for Madison and her friends but if she has got the same strength that her mother has shown over the last year I know I will be seeing pictures of smiling faces on top of Snowdon very soon!!!

All the luck in the world for your trek girls' from all of us here in Afghanistan to all of you there in England.

The proud father of a very special girl xx

The Big Society of Twitter

We are indebted to Madkentdragon for her contribution to our blog. She is one of our staunch supporters and her blog is well worth visiting. Madkentdragon, is part of our Big Society, she worked for the Royal British Legion for 20 years before retiring and still helps out on a temporary basis when there is a problem or lack of staff.

Here's her blog

What is Twitter? It is defined as a “micro-blogging site” where a Tweeter can use 140 characters to describe what they are doing. But to many of us, it is so much more!

When I was first introduced to it by Nicola (@NicolaRBLClubs, I looked at her page and thought “Is this for me? Can I understand the abbreviations and the protocol and most of all – what do I say?”

At the time, although I found plenty to say, I had to minimise my opinions and use it mainly for the Charity I worked for and also found it useful to pass on information on what the Royal British Legion was doing in my County.

However, since I retired I have opened up a whole new world of news, funnies, and other Charities. I have read more about what is happening in the world, so much more than I could see on the news on TV and read in the papers and often within a few minutes of it happening – it is so interesting!

I have also discovered so many charities and fundraisers, all promoting a charity or an activity to raise money for the charities, I have also found out more about the charity I worked for – more than I knew than when I worked for it! The world is my oyster!

I’m a pensioner and cannot afford to donate to every charity – but I can help promote them just by re-tweeting them so that my followers can read about them. Because of my family’s military associations, I do tend to support the military charities more than the others and of course the Royal British Legion is my primary charity. However the military personnel leave behind families who are left to cope with raising a family, paying the bills and keeping it all together – these people are “serving” just as much as the spouse who is “over there”.

One of the Charities I have become involved with does just that – The Home Front Forces Org., which is there to support the parent and children who are missing the other part of their family and need a little help; but without Twitter I would never have known them.

Finally, and most importantly I have found friends! OK they aren’t the ones you sit round the table and have a coffee with, but they are the ones you can make a coffee and chat to on Twitter. I am sometimes house-bound, I have COPD, and to chat to someone on Twitter – may be more than one at a time means that you are not alone; you have friends who will support you, advise you, tease you and make you feel worthwhile; not a housebound person with health problems staring at the walls!

Recently, I had family problems and a nasty flare up of my condition and the caring comments and inquiries and support I received was fantastic! I even had an offer from a Tweeter to visit my son in hospital in Wales because I was unable to travel to see him!

So, you Mums and Dads who are coping whilst your other half is “over there”, come and join us, you’ll find plenty of like minded people on here – and even special offers at times! And by the way, I’m @madkentdragon – I’ll introduce you – so come and find me!!

Emotional lifelines: channels of communication for military families

We are indebted to

Clare Gibson, of The Army Children Archive (TACA), http://www.archhistory.co.uk
for her permission to publish a copy of this article which can be found on the TACA drum blog

The military lifestyle is not usually compatible with a settled family life. Not only are they often on the move as family units, but forces families are frequently divided. This may happen during times of conflict, when military personnel are sent on active service to combat zones, leaving civilian family members behind, and during peacetime, when they go on exercise, for example, sometimes for prolonged periods. And many children of mobile military families must regularly exchange their homes for boarding schools during term time. During such periods of separation, it is vital for families to keep the channels of communication open, with the ways in which they have historically done so* reflecting changing technology.



Until relatively recently, the most common way for separated forces families to communicate with one another was by post, usually through the British Forces Post Office (BFPO); more information about the BFPO, as well as about BAOR postcodes and BFPO numbers, is given on TACA’s ‘Memories & miscellanea’ page. (And an item added to TACA in December 2010, ‘BACKGROUND INFORMATION: A SINGULAR AND MOST UNUSUAL SUB-POST OFFICE', looks at the sub-post office that once existed at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Dover, Kent.) Regular telephone contact has also become increasingly possible following the advent of mobile phones, but maintaining this is more difficult when a family member is on active service – often for security reasons – which is when free ‘blueys’ (aerogrammes) and e-blueys (electronic blueys) may come into their own (for further details, see the BFPO website: http://www.bfpo.mod.uk/).



When it comes to modern media, today’s generation of forces families is increasingly turning to the internet with which to keep in touch using e-mail, instant-messaging and social-networking services (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Twitter, for instance), as well as e-blueys. Envisaged as functioning along similar lines as other social-networking websites, but created with the families of the British armed forces specifically in mind, those behind the HomeFront Forces website hope, funds permitting, to provide an age-appropriate – that is, for younger children – and secure link between separated forces families (visit the website to read more about its aims: http://www.homefrontforces.org/).



Chronicling as it does the history of British army children – and increasingly also of navy and RAF children – TACA tracks developments and initiatives that affect and support forces children. The rapid rise of the internet, mobile phones and social-networking sites clearly transformed the way in which military children communicated with their absent parents during the first decade of the twenty-first century. But will these communications media soon become outdated in their turn? And, if so, what will replace them?






*As well as being a fascinating read, Judith Millidge’s book, Letters from the Front (Brassey’s (UK) Ltd, London, 2002), provides a comprehensive historical overview of the logistics of communication between the battle front and the home front.

Madison on British Forces Television

Today our Patron Madison spoke on British Forces Television about her role in HomeFront Forces you can watch the piece here

Madison on BFTV
http://www.bfbs.com/news/top-story/forces-website-connects-families-across-world-christmas-42661.html

A Tough Christmas for Military Families