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Forever young
IT is only a few weeks until the birthday of a young man from Bedford called Bertram Garwood.
If he were still with us today Bertram would not be a young man - in fact, the birthday would see him turn 130.
But instead Bertram is forever 22, as he died in 1914, fighting in the trenches of the First World War.
His story is one of those covered in a new book, Aisne 1914: The Dawn Of Trench Warfare.
Bertram was born in Bedford on June 17, 1892, and as a young man spent several years serving in various British Army regiments before the war.
By the time the Great War broke out he had been promoted to lance Corporal, and he was one of the first men to be sent to Europe as part of the British Expeditionary Force on August 13. Four months and nine days later, he was dead.
Bertram was one of the 13,500 men believed to have died at the Battle of the Aisne.
Aisne 1914 is the first book dedicated to the battle, and details how the war of movement during the 1914 campaign came to a grinding halt when both sides were unable to breach each other’s lines due to heavy artillery and machine guns. As a consequence both sides dug trenches and it was here at the Aisne that the Western Front which stretched across Europe was started and the descent into trench warfare began.
Aisne 1914: The Dawn of Trench Warfare is published by The History Press, and is available from all good bookshops for £25.
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Weather for Bedford
Monday 20 May 2013
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Temperature: 10 C to 19 C
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