Royal Naval Association - Aquitaine Branch
There will be a Carol Service at 1800 on Tuesday 17th December at Monteton Church should you wish to exercise your vocal chords.
Some of you may remember a Trafalgar Lunch talk given some years ago by Henri Lachèze, a Frenchman who spoke excellent English. He based his talk on 'The Boy Stood On The Burning Deck' (Aboukir Bay). Henri died some time ago but his widow has sorted through all his notes and has produced a small book with the same name. She is selling this for charity. It is well written and presented and costs 7.50€. If anyone thinks they would like a copy please contact Ken Napier.
Ray Pemble used to collect and send off used stamps to the RNIB– since his departure we are now looking for someone to take on this task.
Is anyone willing?
It is not an onerous task – probably only one or two packages per year
If you haven't advised us, and you have a new postal address, please do so at your convenience.
It seems that most unnamed roads and streets, town and country, now have names, and most houses have numbers.
Our new address tells you that our house is 404 metres up a dead-end road from the mainish road (we're at the end).
Changing this one line has proved expensive, including new number plates for our older car.
Beware! It is obligatory to tell all official people like Carte grise, banks, Impots etc.
From Captain Darren Houston, Captain of HMS PRINCE OF WALES:
I am writing from my onboard account, which is a good thing because it means I am at sea and we managed to get away from Portsmouth!
PWLS sailed from Portsmouth at the end of April and returned to sea after a successful defect rectification and maintenance period during the first quarter of the year.
We are currently operating in the south coast areas of England having commenced our generation package to train the Ship’s Company and complete essential trials on key pieces of equipment.
The first few weeks have been bedding in the propulsion plant and establishing the routines for many of the Ship’s Company who are in their first sea assignment. Mind you, the weather has been appalling with one Atlantic low pressure system after another accompanied by unusually high wind speeds for this time of year. Roll on the summer weather and a bit of warmth!
Operational Sea Training starts in earnest at the end of the month and an embarkation of Apache helicopters with about 100 Army Air Corp personnel – our first proper embarkation of an aviation squadron.
We have also been working with various other rotary wing assets including Merlins (Mk 2 and 4) and our affiliated Chinook Squadron (27 Sqn).
One of the highlights this week was the much awaited-for meeting of the two QEC sisters at sea. On Wednesday we rendezvoused with our sister ship, HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH on her way back from Strike Warrior and took a few photographs (thought you might like to see the attached photos – the bigger and faster carrier is in the foreground of the first and second photo!)
