Researching Creech Woods – the historic record

My research for this assignment has been driven by my intention to create  a series of images to evoke the hidden past; to express a sense of absence within the landscape of Creech Woods that comes from the presence of troops there before D-Day fading over time in our collective memory. Research has fallen into two specific areas; the historic record, and then artists and photographers who have explored the themes of memory, absence and presence within the landscape, particularly woodland.

Firstly I wanted to know more about the two D-Day marshalling area camps in Creech Wood ( A11 and A12 ); which units were camped there and whether there are any written or  references ( diaries/ letters) or photographic evidence specific to Creech Wood and to these troops. I discovered that initially the 2^nd Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment was camped in Creech woods before moving on elsewhere on 2 June, 1944. They were replaced by Canadian Troops of the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders ( who landed on Juno Beach on D-Day).

I also turned up some interesting and potentially useful information.

An eyewitness

In the BBC’s archive of World War Two, I came across an entry written by a 10 year He or she describes the road that ran through the woods to Southwick being sealed off to civilians at Bunkers Hill by armed servicemen.This was apparently due to its proximity to the Headquarters of Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery prior to D-Day.Proof of identity and address of residence had to be produced to the soldiers when entering and leaving the area.

He or she writes:

‘Immediately outside my home and all along the side of the narrow village road leading to the Forest of Bere were dozens of armoured vehicles including tanks, bren gun carriers and ducks, a large amphibious vehicle. The crews of these vehicles slept and ate in them. They cooked by oil stoves. Water was obtained from the residents living in the adjacent dwellings.

One particular tank crew, which was positioned immediately in front of our cottage, became very well known to us and, due to the fact that the Luftwaffe appeared in the sky every night trying to locate the well hidden and camouflaged troops in the Forest, fearful that the area may be subjected to bombing, they dug a slit trench in the garden for the three of us should such an event ever take place. Fortunately we did not have to make use of it for, although the Germans knew of the troops existence they failed to locate them and in consequence the aircraft continued on to Portsmouth where they discharged their bombload upon the Royal Naval Dockyard. The sky above the city glowed red and we were so thankful at being some 8 miles from the devastation. As a way of gratitude to the tank crew for assisting us my Mother prepared the odd meal and provided endless mugs of tea.
The troops were positioned in the area for several weeks prior to their embarkation. I cannot remember them departing but one morning when I looked out of the window they were no longer there. They must have pulled out, albeit very quietly, during the night’. (Limbrough)

Diaries / letters

Many of the letters written home by soldiers taking part in the D-Day invasion describe the journey, particularly the crossing and landings and then the following days. Though I did  find a diary written by Captain Alastair Bannerman that though not referencing Creech Wood records his thoughts and emotions before, during and after the invasion – a moving insight:

1st June

‘To-day we have come into a new camp from where we shall embark and so there is only a last bastion between us and the fight in front of us. I have to admit I am not a hero and I have never wished for a free bath in the Channel! Nor have I been impatient because of the long delay.

Now it seems that the day approaches us with the speed of lightning and just now I met Rowland who admitted to me that he was really afraid! He doesn’t know where we go but when we looked at a map of France we have – independently of each other – come to the conclusion that it could be Calais…

James Henderson, gunner major, is asleep; he saw his wife to-day, the lucky man; his name is on a special list and he can go wherever he wishes to. My darling, how very much I long for you, to put my arms around you and to be embraced by you.

It is torture not to get any letters and to feel that very likely you do not get mine either with this 100% censorship. At least I can imagine how you are sleeping now in our familiar and dear nursery, and this is a true blessing. 

2nd June

To-day we learn that tomorrow we will march to be allo-cated to landing craft. So the play is on.

To-day I had rather a hectic time. I have been running about testing the sights of my guns, obtaining replacement parts, arranging everything in the sequence of loading, distributing rations for 24 hours, tinned meat, cookers, pills against sea-sickness, paper bags, chocolate, cigarettes, tablets to disinfect the water...

This little book becomes rather fragmentary as I have to write it often at the end of the days, which have been crammed with work, and, being tired, I cannot write my best. I expect I often repeat myself. But it is only a notebook and may at least tell the outlines of things.

It is now cool evening, the mess has closed, and the time is late when the camp is preparing for its rest, and probably this will be the last night on English soil for ages. Tomorrow I have to get up early, so I have to shave tonight. I feel rather like Father Christmas with all the parcels I have to carry with me…

Tomorrow we shall have to go into our different boats and will not meet each other again for some time, not before we have reached our destination for action. I have already spoken to all of them and bade them good night and now I have to read them three orders of the day, one from the C.O., one from Monty and one from Eisenhower.

Much depends on our gun but I cannot do any more. God be with them and all of us and may it be His Will that we end this horrible thing soon’. (Henderson)

I also came across Eisenhower’s order of the day to D-Day troops issued by General Dwight D. Eisenhower to encourage Allied soldiers taking part in the D-day invasion of June 6, 1944.

Fig. 1

Photographs

Keen to track down any wartime images of the camps I searched the Imperial War Museums online collection and was lucky to track down a few black and white pictures taken in Creech Woods on 29 April 1944 by a Sergeant Wooldridge, an official War Office photographer. I think these images of servicemen writing letters, mending shoes, darning socks in their normality are in themselves very moving, knowing as we do what came later in June. For example:

Fig. 2

So while my extensive research to date has not uncovered a great deal by way material directly pertinent to the Creech Woods camps, I am encouraged by what I have found. This very personal material resonates with me. I think that it offers a moving insight that I would like to somehow incorporate within the project.

References

https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/if-i-dont-come-home-letters-from-a-d-day-captain/

Bannerman,A. et al. (2109) If I Don’t Come Home – Letters from D-Day [Kindle edition] From Amazon.co.uk (Accessed on 24 May 2019)

Limbrough. (2003) Allied troops in the Forest of Bere Before D-Day. At https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/about/siteinformation.shtml (Accessed on 9 May 2019 )

List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Eisenhower, D.D. (1944) Order of the day  At: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowerorderofdday.htm  (Accessed on 25 June 2019)

Figure 2. Wooldridge. (1944) Sergeant Ernest Docherty of the 1st Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers, part of 3rd Infantry Division, composes a letter from his unit’s tented camp at Denmead in Hampshire, 29 April 1944 [Photograph] In Imperial War Museum War Office Second World War Official Collection. Catalogue number H 37989.

 

 

5.4 Online exhibitions

For this exercise we are asked to read Sharon Boothroyd’s OCA post about online exhibitions and consider our experience of viewing ‘Looking at the Land 21st Century American views’, an online exhibition curated by Andy Adams that she highlights in the post. Sharon invites us to add any comments that we might have on this online experience to her post. For some reason though my comments do not seem to have appeared below Sharon’s post so I’m posting them here:

Well, I found this online viewing experience really interesting. I liked the pacing of the presentation, though I admit to pausing it every now and then to go back to have another longer look at one of the images which is what I often do in an exhibition. I also liked having the grid of images to refer to after viewing the presentation, not only the images themselves but also artist details, answers to specific questions and information on the work itself. I did though find the caption details intrusive; the too large font drew the eye to the left away from the image. Smaller captions and centering of the image would have worked better for me.

On the plus side too, the exhibition presented a good range of interesting material and avoided the problem of having to queue up to get close to the work which is what happens in popular exhibitions. Like others I was glad that there was no soundtrack to distract.

I can see that an online exhibition allows a greater reach in terms of viewers but my experience of viewing this one though interesting also felt rather sterile as an experience. I do not think that this was due necessarily to what I was viewing. More that, for me part of going to an exhibition is being able to both see and interact with what is displayed. By this I mean I do not always want to follow the route set out by the curator and I like to see the work at various distances away to get a sense of what I’m seeing. It is difficult to get a visual handle on the curation of this exhibition; what size the images are; how they sit with each other; how they might be hung on a gallery wall and how they look in reality ( since the colour/ detail can appear different depending on what you use to view them).  

Adams has a very interesting website   http://flakphoto.com/  where the Galleries section  acts as an online art space presenting photography portfolios and digital exhibition.s

References

Boothroyd,S. (2012) Online Exhibitions. At: https://weareoca.com/subject/photography/online-exhibitions/ (Accessed 23 June 2019)

Adams,A.  (2013) Looking at the Land  21st Century American Views. At: http://flakphoto.com/exhibition/looking-at-the-land/#projection (Accessed 23 June 2019)

OCA Thames Valley Group meeting June 2019

Another very useful and enjoyable OCA Thames Valley Group (TVG) meeting at the weekend attended by OCA Tutor Jayne Taylor. Though a small group this time, we were able to spend a little longer time discussing and contributing to people’s ideas for current and future work. Michael reported back on his very successful exhibition ‘Target Practice at the Pie Factory in Margate which I’d been following via his Kickstarter posts and videos. I really appreciated his insight into the curating, setting up and invigilating process (made a mental note on the process he used to get lettering direct on the wall i.e. vinyl decal). Jonathan talked over ideas for future work and Richard updated us on progress with his 5000 word essay on objectivity in photography. Dawn asked us about our family photo albums (if we had any) for a paper that she is writing – fascinating to hear what other families had done or did or didn’t do here. I’d like to read Dawn’s finished work. I was also intrigued by the work that Dawn brought to show us including the outcome from work that she and Catherine were producing together.See below:

Cyanotype and polaroids by Catherine / prints by Dawn

TVG meetings are a really good way of having work critiqued so I again took the opportunity to show some experiments that I had done, this time for my fifth assignment ‘Creech Woods’. My intention here is to explore the landscape of Creech Woods in the Forest of Bere within the context of the preparations for the D-Day landings in 1944; a visual juxtaposition of today and the hidden past of these woods

I was interested in their favourable feedback – to see which ones resonated with the idea of tension; conjured up the idea of men and tented encampments. I noted down comments referencing Gerhard Richter and the blurred D Day landing photographs of Robert Capa for future research. I was also thoughtful regarding the blue sky showing in one image being felt by one person as not fitting in the rest, but on the whole I was encouraged by the feedback and will look at this approach in more detail.

Creech Woods is work is very much in its early stages as I’m waiting for my Tutor’s feedback on my assignment proposal. But it was definitely worth taking along for the very helpful feedback and suggestions for further research.

Final images for ‘Shaping our own landscape’ – April 2018 to June 2019

I thought that it would now be helpful useful to see how my ‘Shaping our own landscape ‘ images from April 2018 to July 2019 have worked out. The triptych images  begin with April 2018. The next step is to see how these images would work as a slide show or whether I need to consider an alternative approach to presentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I showed the first six months images at the OCA critique session during our study visit to the Brighton Photo Biennial, the concensus was that I did not need the additional close-up shots  such as :

I’m thoughtful about this …certainly these kind of close-up images may not be needed if I opt to present the triptych images as a slide show …I think I need to experiment now with presentation options.

A possible commentary and book format….

I’ve been thinking about a possible commentary for my Assignment two journey.

There are similarities and differences inevitably between my journey and that made by Cobbett and the two Hampshire landscapes separated by time that we travelled through.  Cobbett talks much about the wheat, barley  and Swedish turnip fields that he sees on his travels, and surprisingly I also found myself travelling through  acreages of growing wheat , past the odd field of barley; tractors replacing Cobbett’s  field workers. Side roads and narrow lanes were remarkably well maintained for farm traffic and all the village cars. This is a landscape crisscrossed by and surviving courtesy of the car. Cobbett noted down the conversations he had with the people he came across i.e. farmers, landowners , innkeepers  and field workers. Where were the people on my travels? Few and far between, though there were  many ‘ signposts’ to say  that they were there. .. living, working, and enjoying the countryside.

Like Cobbett I came across ‘stately’ homes, though in my time more obviously diversifying like surrounding farming communities.  Commerce and traffic… would Cobbett know  this landscape?  I like to think that he would still recognise landmarks such as Portsdown Hill, some of the old village inns ( yes, they are still there) …and those  fields of wheat not overtaken by the creeping housing estates.

And yet, I wonder whether a comparative commentary is such a good idea and should I perhaps just focus on my own observations?

How to present this journey ?

Some further thoughts, probably dependent on how I want to present these images. Should I opt for bookform? Perhaps a kind of notebook, travel journal? at the moment I’m  still favouring a concertina book though probably not the vertical ‘postcard’ format that I considered earlier – more a horizontal format such as Ed Rusha’s ‘EVERY BUILDING ON THE SUNSET STRIP 1966’.

Experimenting with Blurb…

At this stage of musing, having noted that exercise 5.3  is all about creating a print-on-demand book, I decided to take the opportunity to experiment with a book layout for my journey images. ( See exercise 5.3 for details) . I used Lightroom’s version of Blurb to create a layout, noting on the way that if I do go ahead with a book format, I will revisit the commentary and go direct to the Blurb website as I found using Lightroom a little ‘clunky’…

Here’s the pdf cover : A Rural Ride through Hampshire 170619 Cover   and the link to the layout and contents at A Rural Ride through Hampshire 170619 with page numbers

 

Print-on-demand mock-up

This exercise is all about familiarising myself with a print-on-demand application i.e. Blurb and experimenting with a book design. Since I  do not yet have sufficient photographs from my work on Assignment Five, I’ve decided to use the final images selected for Assignment Two.I have used Blurb before for a number of books but this time decided to use the Lightroom book version. Interestingly, I found this version more difficult to  use than the Blurb website. This was mainly around adding text which seemed less easy to align in the way I wanted and the overall image being worked appeared too small for comfort. So, next time round I will go straight to my Blurb account and work there.

A Rural Ride Through Hampshire ( working title)

So, the key decision here was whether to add captions to each image in addition to an introductory explanatory paragraph and closing remarks following up the final image.Having decided tactics here, it then became a question of the cover design, typeface and font size. I opted to use Adobe Garamond Pro throughout for clarity but also suiting the historical link in time between my rural ride and that of William Cobbett in 1823. I always find it difficult to decide upon the font size for books and bearing in mind that you usually need to go smaller than you think I opted for 12pt for the paragraphs; the title page and cover being much larger at 36.2 / 26.6pt ( for some reason I could not get Lightroom to give me straightforward sizes such as 12/14/36pt etc…). I chose dark blue for the colour of text on the cover as I thought that black was too harsh a colour and worked against the image. All the images were place on the right hand page, the placing of explanatory text being opposite aligned to the bottom of the image; the exception being the postscript comments.

Here’s the current pdf version of the cover: A Rural Ride through Hampshire 170619 Cover     and the contents pdf can be found at: A Rural Ride through Hampshire 170619 with page numbers

Completing this exercise has been useful in helping me form an idea as to how  Assignment Two would look presented in book form. As yet I’m not sure whether to rework the book or present the images as prints ( though this does not allow any commentary ). It will be interesting to see what my tutor thinks….