Longtime Ago People

Finding Reg Rogers

• M I L E S • Season 2 • Episode 6

Share episode

Reg Rogers - Matt 1963
 
great‑great uncle/great‑great nephew 

It’s a striking truth about the First World War: a huge proportion of British and Commonwealth soldiers who died have no known grave. Many were buried where they fell, lost to artillery, or laid to rest in makeshift cemeteries that vanished as the front moved. Today, hundreds of thousands are either commemorated on memorials to the missing or lie in graves marked simply as “A Soldier of the Great War — Known Unto God.”

One unexpected email can redraw a family map. When the Commonwealth War Graves Commission reached out about an “unknown” Royal Marine from the Somme, Matt followed the thread from inbox to headstone and watched a century‑old mystery turn into a name, a ceremony, and a living legacy. What Matt & his family first assumed was spam quickly became a masterclass in how careful research — war diaries, graves reports, precise mapping — can identify a single company sergeant major among thousands of the missing.

When I speak with Matt, he takes me back to the moment the news landed: the indirect route the MOD used to track down living relatives, and that first drive through a landscape where cemeteries appear around every bend. At the rededication, a Royal Marine bugler, a Major, veterans, a chaplain, and a representative of the British Embassy in Paris—a Royal Navy attaché, a Captain—stood with the family as Reginald Clarence Rogers MM was honoured. A serving company sergeant major from Lympstone (Royal Marine Commando Training Centre) even came on his own time because he holds the same rank today—a detail that seemed to collapse the distance between 1918 and now. We also explore Reg’s life: born in Kent, service across the empire, rapid mobilisation in 1914, a Military Medal for guiding units to the jumping‑off line at Gavrelle, and his final days on the River Ancre.

Beyond the ceremony, the story widens. We talk about museum barns filled with unearthed relics, a local collector with binoculars engraved with Reg’s name, and a family long tied to the Royal Marines — from a grandfather who served with Churchill to a son now eyeing military service. What emerges is a clearer sense of what remembrance really requires: stewards, records, places, and people willing to show up.

If you’ve ever wondered how an unknown grave becomes a person again, or how a single headstone can change the way a family sees itself, you’ll find the proof in this conversation.

If this story moved you, follow the show, share it with someone who loves history, and leave a review to help others find it.

"Churchill's Batman" refers to the orderly or personal attendant for Winston Churchill

BBC Story: Graves of lost World War One soldiers found

Reg Rogers 
DoB: 18/03/1889
DoD: 26/03/1918

Send a text

“Follow Longtime Ago People wherever you get your podcasts.”

Copy this RSS feed and paste it into your podcast app.

https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2503597.rss

Instagram: @longtimeagopeople

Blog: longtimeagopeople.com

Have a story echoing through time? I’m listening—300 words or fewer.

Memory is Fragile

"In a world where you can be anything, be kind."


SPEAKER_00:

In this episode, I'm going to be speaking to Matt about his remarkable story of let me get this right, Matt, your great great uncle.

SPEAKER_01:

That's the one. Yep.

SPEAKER_00:

That's the one. Reg Rogers, what a great name as well. Who was a Royal Marine who fell at the Battle of the Somme and has only just been identified more than a century later. We're going to explore how this news first reached Matt and his family. Hi Matt, how are you today?

SPEAKER_01:

I'm good, thanks. Miles, how are you?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm all good, thank you very much. Right, okay, so how did this story start? That's my first question.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it literally was out of the blue and a and a contact from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to my cousin called Paul Hatch. They've gone with Paul. There's three of us in this generational line with the surname Hatch, and Paul being the closest in the family tree to the line that the MOD followed. All that will be unraveled as we go on, I'm sure. But bottom line was an email out of the blue from the Commonwealth War Commissions, which at first we thought was spam, to my cousin Paul saying, Are you linked to this family line of Rogers? And do you have grandparents that are Dudley and Florence Hatch? And he replied, and as soon as he replied, say yes, that is my grandparents on my dad's side. James Hatch was his his dad, who was my uncle. That unraveled more details in an email from these folk who are just a wonderful team of about half a dozen people or less that have, in their words, the best job in the world because they reconnect lost family with unknown war dead. It's an amazing job that they do, and where they can, they will hold rededication services for these fallen heroes.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, come on to how long has this organization been running?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh Commonwealth War Graves, I I don't know. All I know is it's I think it's been going since the end of the war, the Second World War, perhaps. I'm really not sure. All I know is that this organization is responsible for the upkeep of Commonwealth War Graves all over the world. And it's fascinating what they do. How they're funded, I'm not sure, but it's a fantastic organisation. And as we'll unravel, I we attended my great-great uncle's rededication service, which was a full military rededication service with the Royal Marines last year, last October. We visited quite a few graves, and all the graves are beautifully kept. And where they're not beautifully kept because they need of upkeep after 25 or 30 years, they will put a lovely sign up there to say, sorry, it's temporarily closed because we're going to revisit this graveyard and make it even better, because there are sadly plentiful graveyards in that whole area, which comes as a shock when you first visit there, as I did last October, having never been to that particular region of France.

SPEAKER_00:

So, how did you feel when you saw his name?

SPEAKER_01:

So I'm guessing they put his name on the grave of So basically you have these various graveyards there. Uh and if you you and I were to drive there now, not having been there before, as soon as you come off the motorway and you start going down the country lanes to closer to where you are, you'll spot a cemetery coming up right beside the road on one side of the road, and then you go half a mile or less, and there'll be another cemetery on the left-hand side, and then a distance you can see some huge memorial, and you think, oh my gosh, what's that one? And then next time you see another roadside memorial. There are I'll say hundreds, but it it just gets I've never ever had that experience in my life of where you you see all these military graves and it just hits you at the sheer scale of death and the size of the fighting that happened during that first world war. Awful, awful. And and the the scale of death at the scale. And also, equally, what comes from that death is the bravery on both sides, you know. Previously I'd seen some World War II sites with my eldest son, and never thought I had any link to First World War um death or area or need to go to the Somme until this came in. And as I say, it was literally an email to my cousin Paul. Um, I think it was early last year, or it took it's about a year in the making to get all this done, so it may have been the end of 2024. The email came in, and clearly we wanted to the the contact was there are no family lines left as direct descendants of Reg Rogers, so we've gone sideways to find you guys, and you're all linked because um I'm gonna get this straight now, and I'm looking at a visual family tree now. But basically, Reg Rogers was was part of a siblings, and one of those siblings was James Hoy and Lily Rogers, who uh became a couple, or they were the couple that bore my grandmother, if that makes sense. And her name's Florence Hoy, so H-O-Y, and she married my granddad, my called Dudley Hatch, which is why we've got the Hatch name. So that's how it changed from Rogers. But originally the family, the original family tree was Frederick Rogers and Florence Rogers. They were Reg Rogers' parents, and they had the the siblings. I think there's four boys um and one girl, and the Lily Rogers married James Hoy, who would have been my great-great-granddad, who's also a Royal Marine, Company Sergeant Major, as it happens. There's so many Royal Marine connections in this story, it's unreal. But you also look back about that timeline and you think, well, most people would have been involved in the military of that around that time. But it's just there's a strong Royal Marine connection with with the hatches and the hoys.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. Going back to your own personal feeling. So this has all happened, you've got to this grave site. I mean, how did you feel when you when you you finally saw his name there on the grave?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, to put it into perspective, his his grave sits sits there in the soil alongside two or three unknown Royal Marines as well. So it's a before and after. You've got this sense of wow, up until this point, sat there with quite a few people, there's about 20 to 50 people around. There was press, there was photography, we had a a Royal Marine bugler, we had a Royal Marine officer, a brigadier, we had a naval attaché from the embassy in Paris that come out. Uh, we had the the Reverend John Money or Money, he's a staff chaplain for the whole of the commando force. So initially, when we arrived early in our suited and booted best, you could see other folk arriving early that were part of the service. And you and then you start to think, this is a full-blown effort. This is going to be quite a service. And up until that point, I had no expectations about what a rededication service would entail, you know, let alone a military one. So bit by bit you see a bugler emerging from a car, then another officer, then the reverend, and they all come over. Um, Miles, these men are just really friendly, really lovely people. Introduce themselves by their first name, no pretentiousness whatsoever. And then you start seeing other cars arriving uh along the roadside there, because it sits on quite a busy, well, a main country road, let's put it that way, on this cemetery number two, Sarah Road, number two cemetery. You then sense introduce each other, say, Yes, he's our great-great uncle. I'm there with my brother, Ark, and Paul, my cousin, and and his sisters. So we're all there, and we say hello and introduce ourselves, and we start walking up this long slope up towards the back of the cemetery where the headstones are. And then you see the reeves that have all been prepared from the various organizations, the Commonwealth Wargraves, the Royal Marines, British Royal British Legion, and you then get this sense of wow, this is really moving, and the scale of the organization is really incredible. And clearly there'd been some publicity about it beforehand, which we were totally unaware of because people were arriving. There was even Miles, there was even some previous retired vets from both Royal Marines and otherwise that were turning up there with their berries and they were in their civilian clothes and they would be behind us in a line of the relatives facing the stone with their berries on, it's coming out of a sign of respect. There was even the company sergeant major from who travelled up from Limpstone, which is the Royal Marine Commando training base in is it Devon, near Exeter. And he travelled because he saw this in their internal news or or whatever, however it's communicated, and he wanted to come straight away because he held the same rank as my great-great uncle Reg Unreal. And he said, I wanted to come and pay my respect because not only is it a wonderful story, but also he holds the same rank of as me, and he was he's in charge of all the Royal Marine recruits at Limpstone. How did the younger members of your family react? Well, out of those five of us that were there, I I am the youngest, but um the others, it's it's a good question. The others, I've got two sons and a daughter. I'm not sure they're that connected. One son at 26, another one at eight eight almost. He's certainly not connected to it yet, it's too early. But my oldest son is interested in military, and in fact, he's just about to join, or he's applying to join the army reserves. I've tried to persuade him to get to the form.

SPEAKER_00:

That's remarkable.

SPEAKER_01:

And had a great conversation with the the company sergeant major from from the training ground about saying, what can I do to persuade my eldest son to come to you guys rather than the army, which was a really interesting conversation. Yeah, interest, but not right, okay, I'll I'll level with you. I think you physically have to go to the area for it, whatever it is, to hit you. And when it hits you, it hits you like a bulldozer.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I'm sure it does. The thing I'm trying to understand is how do they find, how do they find red from a from an unmarked grave? How did they get from an unmarked grave to to knowing it's Reg Rogers?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's the first question that hits you, isn't it? And that certainly hit us. And my cousin put together about six or seven questions for the Commonwealth War Commission, because when this first hits you, you can see the link from the family tree, but then you think, well, how do you know it's him? Automatically, this done age with technology, we all probably assume DNA, and actually DNA is used, but in this particular case, DNA wasn't used. It's basically good old-fashioned research and hard work from a volunteer, someone who takes a lot of interest in this, who sadly has subsequently passed, but he was a Canadian. Can I read you an extract from uh email? This this comes directly from um the Commonwealth War grade lady called Alexia, who is absolutely really helpful and lovely. Dear Paul, thank you for getting in touch and for confirming that you are the correct family. I am delighted to hear you are aware of Company Sergeant Major Rogers and that so many of you are keen on being involved and possibly attending the service for him. The case for identifying Company Sergeant Major Rogers was originally put together by a researcher called Richard Loughton. Richard was based in Canada but had a huge interest in World War I history and submitted lots of research cases to the Commonwealth Graves Commission. Sadly, he died in between submitting this case and it being passed on to us for assessment. When a case is submitted to us, we review all the information submitted and supplement it with our own research. In this particular case, a range of documents have been used to make the identification. When someone has received a proper burial, we would never exhum them, so a clear and convincing case has to be made on paper. Fascinating. The Graves registration report and the concentration of Graves burial return, these are two original documents from the 1920s which show that the remains of an unknown company sergeant major of the Royal Marines Light Infantry were recovered from a specific grid reference on the edge of the river Anchor or Anchor in the ninth in 1923. He was identified as to his rank and regiment by the uniform, buttons, badge, and boots he was wearing, but he had nothing else with him which could offer his name or even date on which he died. Then they go on to say that the RMLI, the Royal Marines Light Infantry war diaries show that they were only on in the Somme sector four times during the war. One in the Battle of Anchor, which was mid-November 1916, operations on the Anchor, which was January to March 17, Battle of Bapum 24th to 25th of March 18, and Battle of Albert, 21 to 23 August 1918. The Commonwealth War Grave, this is a nub of it really, this is the bit that tells us the answer. The Commonwealth Graves Commission Casualty Database shows that the Royal Marine Light Infantry lost 10 company sergeant majors during the war, five of whom died in France. Of those five, four had no known grave. We then plotted the last known locations of each of those four men, using the war diaries and other contemporary documents, and found that three were simply much too far from the spot where the remains were found to be possible candidates. On the date that CSM Rogers died, his unit were within metres of where the remains were found. So in short, there is simply no one else who fits the description of the man buried in the grave, and so we are satisfied that at long last he has been found. Approximately a third of those listed as missing from the Great War are in fact buried in an unnamed grave like this, but it is still pretty rare to be able to identify them. The reality of the situation is that in the nineties and nineteen thirties, when the battlefields were being cleared, they simply didn't have easy access to the same level of information as we do now, otherwise a lot more men might have been identified.

SPEAKER_00:

Amazing. Yeah. And considering that it's over a hundred years ago as well. It's just incredible.

SPEAKER_01:

We've we've since found out that there's about, if memory serves me correctly from the conversation last October, about four identifications a month that occur. And we went to the Thievefall Museum, and when you first enter the Thieffall Museum, there's a montage of like passport-sized photographs, head and shoulder shots. And it's all been put together in a huge imagery on the left as you go in. Huge, like I wouldn't call it a poster, it's like a mural. And that that hits you as well at the scale of the because those are images of all the unknown burial places where these people are still missing and they don't know where they are. So that hits you. Um and unbeknownst to us at that time, Reg actually finally fell um after recovering in the woods nearby at Feetfall, ironically enough. And that's where he ultimately died, which I didn't know when I was there walking around. We only found that up subsequently. Because the other thing, Miles, is that once this is a bit like a book in itself, these are just the early chapters for us in our generation of trying to uh reconnect and follow the trail. I mean, we even my brother and Paul and I, after the so if I if I can just move on, after that service, we then were invited to almost like afternoon tea and cakes in a in a cafe run by some some Brits in a place that they call Ocean Villas, or that the Tommies at the time, or the Brits used to call it Ocean Villas, because it was in a village of like Ochiana or something like that. They couldn't really pronounce it well. So it got nicknamed. It got nicknamed Ocean Villas, and it's quite famous in the military sphere for those that have been over there. And opposite the and this in this tiny little hamlet, blink, and you drive right past it. But opposite was like a big farmhouse, and unbeknownst to us, it was a museum. And they said, Oh, would you like to go into the museum afterwards? Because we had tea and cake there, and it's when we could all relax and talk more to the to the padre, the officers, and the people that had attended. And it was lovely. You you walk into that huge museum, and there I've got some photographs that were just it's amazing. The amount of artillery shelves that are on display there. These are all part of a collection of farmers, and there's one area of this museum, it's not really a uh, you know, it is a museum, but it's like also a museum in a huge cow shed, if that makes sense. Um, there's no there's no modernity to it. Um, and there's one air, one section of this museum, which is purely all the remnants of what farmers have ploughed up since the war and what has been recovered from the fields and all that area, and it's just masses, masses of items, you know, buckles, belts, yeah, bed badges, cat, all things that and and it again, the scale, it just hits you with the scale of Miles. It it hits you. Absolutely fascinating. And there was supposed to be at the rededication service a local Frenchman had got wind of the uh article and he said, I think I have your great-great uncle's um binoculars that got his name on it. And my brother has since communicated to him. Yeah. And we've seen photographs now of the binoculars that were personally issued to Reg Rogers MM, of which I'm really proud to say MM now. Um and yeah, we've seen the photographs with his with his name uh on there and his number, and we're trying to see if one day maybe we can we can get those back. And his medals. Apparently, the Frenchman has promised them to another collector, and we asked him where he picked them up from, and he picked them up from one of these numerous kind of brocondes or trade fairs that are all in the villages of France every every week. So, yeah, it's a fascinating story how things can finally be reconnected, and hopefully we can we've got to try and find out where his military medal has gone because Reg didn't have any children, so nothing passed down the line, and it went to his his wife, Mabel, and she they never had any children and then just gone sideways and found and found sideways, yeah. So that's the next challenge, and also we've also said as a group that we'd like to go back there again. I'd like to bring my children back there and reconnect them to the storyline. Can I read uh an extract from the service?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, please do.

SPEAKER_01:

So this gives us more information about Reg and his life. Company Sergeant Major Reginald Clarence Rogers Military Medal. He was born on the 18th of March 1889, and he died on the 26th of March 1918. So I'll read. Reginald Clarence Rogers was born in Wye, Kent, that's WYE, to parents Frederick and Florence. He was the youngest of eight children, having four older sisters and three older brothers. Frederick was a railway signalman and by the time of 1891 census still had six of his eight children living at home. At this time, Reginald's oldest brother was employed as a groom, whilst one of his sisters was a pupil teacher in a local school. Reginald enlisted with the Royal Marine Light Infantry in 1906, having previously worked as a baker's assistant. His service record states that he was five foot six inches tall with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a fresh complexion. He also had a tattoo depicting crossed hands, a heart, and the words true love on his right forearm. It is not clear whether he had this on joining or whether he got it later. Following his training at Deal in Kent, he was appointed to the Chatham Division of the Royal Marine Light Infantry. He was promoted to corporal in March 1911, and by the outbreak of war he had already seen service in India, Gibraltar and Hong Kong. Following the outbreak of war on the 4th of August 1914, Reginald was mobilised immediately. He served with the Royal Marine Brigade at Ostend from 26 August to 19th September 1914, at Dunkirk from 20 September to 2nd of October 1914, and in the Defence of Antwerp 3rd to 9 October 1914. He was promoted to sergeant on the 10th of October 1914 and to acting sergeant major in May 1917. He was awarded the Military Medal in late April 1917 for actions at Gavrell, the London Gazette records. CSM Rogers rendered very good service with the guides, bringing up both the Essex Essex Regiment and the 1st Royal Marine Light Infantry to the jumping off line from the trenches and was awarded the military medal. He was killed in action at the crossing of the River Ankh on 26th of March 1918, but his body was not recovered at the time, leaving him listed as missing, believed killed. Reginald was not the only casualty of war in his family. His brother Archibald served with the Royal Garrison Artillery and died of wounds in November 1916. He is buried at Corsell au Bois, less than five miles from where Reginald fell, and just as an intercept, we happened to visit his graveside as well. Reginald was survived by his wife Mabel Grace Annie Mills, who he had married in Thanet in early 1915. They had no children. Mabel never remarried and died in Thanet in 1959. In 1923, 1923, an unknown company Sergeant Major, the Royal Marine Light Infantry, was recovered on the edge of the river Anchor, identified as such by his uniform buttons and badges. The unknown CSM was reburied at Serra Road No. Two cemetery shortly thereafter. Recent research has revealed that the unknown CSM is Reginald. And so today we we rededicate his grave accordingly. So that was yeah. And going back to your early point, I was actually quite emotional at the beginning of the service because all of this suddenly hit me in one point in one time. And yeah, it took some concentration to kind of get back in in the present, if you know, because it it just hit you about the scale of this man's achievements and how he died.

SPEAKER_00:

And what we were the fact that he had he had travelled to India and Hong Kong, and for me the fact that his wife never remarried and she she she died many, many years later in 1959.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's um it's incredible. It's just you know, it's it's something that I'm I would have been in awe listening to some other story or film or documentary or whatever, but to think that there's a relation there, albeit distant, makes me feel very proud, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I was because I I've written the word proud down on my pad here. Seriously, I have. Um that just comes across. How did the involvement of the Ministry of Defence and the BBC shape the way that this story's been told?

SPEAKER_01:

My cousin Paul's best friend, because there was a link to Surrey or Kent, saw the article covered in the BBC and sent it to my cousin. So that's how we knew it. The BBC had picked up the story. Yeah. But they picked up there was two unidentified casualties that were um re-identified. One was a soldier from Surrey and the other one was Reg Rogers. So that's why they were both covered in the BBC article, which is which I've sent you, which is a quick cursory view of uh of the story. And there's a picture of us standing at the graveside with the Royal Marine commander at the time in the cemetery. But yeah, it's um the notes from the you know, the MOD have basically said the MOD, seeing that there were no male descendants on the Rogers side, switched their attention to the sister of Reginald, Lily Amelia Rogers, and she married my great-great-granddad James Hoy, who was himself a company sergeant major in the Royal Marines, and they had two children, Florence and Frederick. Frederick had no children. Liszt left the Florence line. And Florence was my nanny Flo, and she married my granddad Dudley, who also served in the Royal Marines. And they had two sons, James, which is my uncle, and a ten-year gap with John, who was my dad, who passed a couple of years ago, sadly. The MOD took the line of the eldest son, James, and his son Paul. This is why Paul was contacted by Alexia of the MOD concerning the identification of the remains of Reg near River Anchor near Thheatfall. But up until now, Miles, it's interesting because it mentions Dudley, but in our family, Dudley Hatch had been quite the famous Royal Marine because he was Churchill's Batman during the Second World War.

SPEAKER_00:

Remember you telling me this, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So, you know, obviously growing up, that was my proud, you know, proud little moment of link to saying my granddad was Churchill's Batman. Because by the time the war broke out, my my granddad Dudley had already served his four year service. So he had to he was too old to combat. So then and he lived in he was working in central London. So he was in he spent most of his time with Churchill underneath the Admiralty. And um, and literally my cousin Paul, who follows this for the family tree very deeply, he was bringing some old notes and diary notes of my granddad. So there we were in the hotel in this village last October with a service, a place called Albert or Albert, and we were one evening going through all these books, and all of a sudden now it brought it all to life the closeness of the generational of the generations of Ormarines, and it joined it's like joining the dots, it really was fascinating. And there's one entry from my dot from my granddad saying today I escorted Mr. Churchill to Liverpool from an extract from his diary. It's fascinating, it's really great. Yeah, he was his Batman. So uh my granddad had some good education and and was one of his roles was to teach the Royal Marine officers, the new recruits, and uh to to make sure they were on the right pathway. I remember going to many reunions at Eastney Barracks in Portsmouth as a young boy. And I remember also, in fact, I still got a pair of cufflinks and a letter from one such Royal Marine officer who wrote back to him to say your words of guidance and counsel at a young time when I was a young officer have stayed with me throughout my career and to say you've been a shining light. I think he sent them to my dad on learning that Dudley had passed away years ago when I was 15. Yeah, so it's a it's a it's a trail of Royal Marine history, great people. Miles, the other thing that also is fascinating, if you don't mind me saying, is that when we stayed in this hotel, the hotel we stayed at was a was an Ibbis hotel in the middle of um the middle of Albert, or just on the outskirts rather of Albert. And um a fantastic location. The first thing that hits you when you walk into that hotel is the carpet has poppies all over it that are actually that are actually sewn into you know, they're actually that's the pattern of the carpet, poppies, and there's constant memorials there. So when you first rock up before you've even, you know, the night before the service, you think, okay, this is quite special then, this is quite permanent, the amount of people that visit. But then you see a coach load of people turning up, and you realise there's specialist holiday companies that specialise in tours of the war graves, and some people got to hear about our story, and that and these these holiday companies have tour guides that are on the coach, and they were coming over saying, This is so as has already been mentioned earlier, this is so rare. You know, it's so rare that any unknown soldier that we find has living relatives that are still there that can attend a rededication service. So to actually speak to you guys and find out about your relative is is amazing. We couldn't believe that almost everybody on that coach journey over the two days that were in that hotel came to speak to us individually. That the before the service, after the service, the next morning, they all wanted to know a bit more. And I think I meant, I may have mentioned, started to mention earlier, that after that tea and cakes, after the service, my brother and my cousin and I took off on a 45-minute journey across the country to go and find this village called Gavrel, where Reg Rogers won his military medal. So we wanted to see if we could where that happened, and we tried to trace it back. But we that's another, you know, that in itself is another bit because there we found this innocuous-looking huge anchor by the roadside, which you know you'd travel past at 50 miles an hour thinking, what's that got to do with it? But that was a commemorative symbol of the battle that had happened there where my great-great uncle had won his military medal. So and we read that plaque, and we just there was it was amazing. Even the honourable honourable artillery company was involved. Because again, another thing that that you people may not know is that during the time of the First World War, we had too many sailors and not enough ships. So some of the sailors were were re-re-allocated to fight in the trenches, and that's that's how this Royal Marine Light, that's how this Royal Marine Light Infantry Unit or Brigade was formed, because they had some soldiers, they had some Royal Marines, and they had some sailors, and they all fought together as one team. Incredible.

SPEAKER_00:

So just touching on the poppy things next year or this year now, I suppose, when we get to Remembrance Sunday and you got your poppy on you, it's gonna feel different to you, I I would imagine.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it will do. Yeah, it definitely will do. It does already because I've I mentioned my dad passing, but what I haven't shared with you is my dad passed on Remembrance Day as well. And that's and he he went through the Green Beret as well. He was a Royal Marie Breach. What would he make of all this?

SPEAKER_00:

Because obviously, unfortunately, he passed before this all came out. What do you think he'd make of this?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh he would have loved it. He would have loved it, yeah. And it's just so befitting of him. He would love the remembrance service. I I watch the service at Royal Albert Hall every year. Love watching that, always well up watching that with a tier or two or a hundred. It's a great service. In fact, interestingly, Miles, when they have the two by two different military personnel marching down the sides of Royal Albert Hall. I don't know if you remember that scene where they come past the seats and they fill up the area, the arena to stand ready for the service, and they have representatives from all the different forces. When it came to announce the Royal Marines, it came up saying Royal Marine Training Unit at Limpstone, and there was bustling with bustling with pride at the beginning of leading down about 20 Royal Marine officers or recruits rather, was the company sergeant major who came to Reg Rogers Rededication Service, who was the one who was from Limpstone, who said I had to be here for this service. So there it was leading down the Royal Marines. So that was another, like, oh my gosh, there's another moment of saying that's the same chap that we were speaking to in October. So obviously a very and the the pride of the Royal Marines. It was amazing. I had a fantastic conversation with him about the recruitment process, what he his particular role involved with. It just reinforced how the Royal Marines is such a tight-knit family unit.

SPEAKER_00:

I think talking to you today, it reminds me really that Reggie's Reggie's story is not just about the past, it's also about memories. And this is one of the reasons why I want to do this podcast, just to make sure that these voices and these moments get talked about, because otherwise they just will fade. Maybe get your your son to listen to this podcast and then he'll come out again next year when you go back or whatever.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, no, there's quite a few people that have said, Oh, I'll I'll listen to that, send me the link. Miles, it's fantastic what you're doing. I was only saying to um a colleague um this morning actually about saying I've got this call at Hard Boss One or whatever, and um saying it reminds me what you're doing reminds me of old-fashioned photo books, and of course, that doesn't happen anymore because all our photos stay on our phones. So well done, you brilliant.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you very much, man. Well, thank you very much for sharing this story, this remarkable story of uh Reg and uh I look forward to seeing how this develops for you. And uh, I think for myself, you know, I've I found out when I spoke to my aunt about my granddad who was a Japanese prisoner of war and uh he was there at the fall of Singapore and all this. I these are the things I didn't know. Yeah, yeah, I'd heard things, but I didn't know the stories. And to find out that like my grandparents had a love story was just remarkable for me. So yeah, these things that that you know that happened to yeah, our our predecessors are so important, and they definitely shape who we are today. So thank you again, Matt, for taking your time out. All right.

Head Shot

Miles

Host