August 12, 2011
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Friday 12th August 2011
Friday Night: hot and sticky, 30C. But it's been a much cooler and bearable week with temperatures more like 25C, it was even cloudy all day Wednesday, but that was nice after the weekend incineration.
Frankly I did very little at first this week as the fiesta just wipes you out. We have had the exhibition set up too and I only took it all down last night, so we still had the odd visitor and the private visits last much longer.
Chrissie has been making our family tree's online and this has answered life long questions about earlier generations, in fact we have had the most success with two of my lines I knew nothing about, all the way back to 1790 something..... It also led to me to trying to trace my Grandfathers war record of his DFC. But I had no luck, I have tired many times before with no luck which was so strange because it was one of the first DFM's to be awarded. Even with the power of a top ancestery site I was drawing a blank. So then I decided to take another look at his log book entry.
I spent the greater part of yesterday morning looking for the pictures I had taken of the original log book and eventually found them on the original chip from the oldest camera! Anyway once I found this I looked closely at the log book and then saw that his entry describiing the medal winning mission had been countersigned by a Lt Spurling, I had never noticed that before, so I did a search and bingo!... Spuring is well documented, but they were calling my Grandfather Frank Bell. He had indeed changed his name, but from George to William, as well as add three years, but thta's what he signed....
Anyway I sent copies of the log book to the main war records website as well as his picture and now it shows him and his correct name and William!. I also changed the Wikipeadiea entry and supplied a link from that page to a page with the log book and his picture, correct name and date of birth, (they need verification or the entry gets deleted) but now Wikipedia's original source of information has also this too, so I feel very pleased that after 90 something years the record is straight.
The other thing that rather chuffed me is that he is officially recognised as a WW1 Flying ACE...... Awesome!
Search George Stanley Bell DFM and follow the links to him.....
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