Whilst researching the services history of Edwin Ffoulkes-Jones, a man who served with the Royal Air Force in both WW1 and WW2, I came across an incident that took place in October 1920 which involved [then] Flying Officer Ffoulkes-Jones. Whilst flying Bristol F2b Serial No: D8051 on an operation over Kufa on the 19th October, 170 km south of Baghdad, he was caught in a sandstorm and crashed. Though Ffoulkes-Jones was uninjured, his aircraft was destroyed. The following day, Flying Officer A H Beach left 6 Squadron's base at Hinaidi (near Baghdad), flying another F2b Serial No: D7844, and flew to the crash site to pick up Ffoulkes-Jones and take him back to the squadron, sitting in the observer's cockpit. Having covered less than half the distance (53 km north of Kufa and over the village of Hillah), the engine cut out and the aircraft crashed. The pilot was uninjured but Ffoulkes-Jones received a deep laceration to his left knee. D7844 was later recovered and rebuilt, remaining in service with 6 Squadron until the 31st May 1922 when it crashed on landing at Sulermanejeh (144 km from the railhead at Kyri - 288 km NNE Baghdad). The aircraft was destroyed, its pilot Flt Lt F N Hudson died of his injuries and his observer Flt Lt E Drudge seriously injured. To demonstrate how dangerous it was to fly in peacetime RAF, this accident happened only two weeks after a 6 Squadron F2b (Serial No: D7845) suffered engine failure on take-off and stalled into the ground when the pilot attempted to turn back at 100 feet. The aircraft burst into flames and both pilot (Flying Officer L C Hooton) and observer (AC2 G C Butler) were killed outright. Shown below is a 6 Squadron line-up of Bristol F2b fighters, the photograph taken most likely at Hinaidi in early October 1920. The third F2b from the left is D8051, the aircraft that FO Ffoulkes-Jones crashed whilst flying an a sandstorm.

I sent a copy of my latest book, 'Over the Western Front' to Wouter Moyaert, the archivist at Poperinge Council and he kindly posted the following on the Poperinge City Archive Facebook page. As the book is set in the towns of Abele (Abeele) and Poperinge (Poperinghe), I thought it might make interesting research material for anyone who would like to know how the men of the Royal Air Force squadrons stationed around Ypres and Poperinge during the WW1 years interacted with the local civilian population. In the words of the archivist, " Post uit Australië! Auteur Steve Buster Johnson schreef op basis van het dagboek van zijn grootvader dit boek over de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Poperinge en Abele komen er uitgebreid in aan bod ."

My latest Royal Flying Corps book, Over the Western Front with 6 Squadron Royal Air Force, can now be purchased from any of the major on-line book stores, such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Abebooks, Book Depository and Alibris. However, depending upon the country of delivery, you may find that buying from FeedaRead is still the cheapest option. Check out the prices for all my books on the GoodReads website https://www.goodreads.com

Quicker than originally anticipated, my fifth writing project, a Royal Flying Corps book entitled 'Over the Western Front with 6 Squadron', has gone on sale. Initially it will only be able to be purchased direct from the publisher's website (Feed-a-Read), but by the end of February 2019, copies can be purchased from any of the on-line book stores as well as from Feed-a-Read. The RRP is AU$17 plus AU$5 postage for UK addresses (equivalent to about £12). For anyone not living in the UK, the postage at the moment is exorbitant (about AU$22 per copy). For this reason I will be keeping a small stock of books for those living outside the UK who wish to purchase a copy as a single book qualifies for a letter rate of postage from Australia. Contact me via the HELP menu item to order a copy - $17 pickup or $22.00 delivered.

The final draft of my next book, "Over the Western Front - with 6 Squadron Royal Flying Corps" was approved by the publisher, Feed-a-Read, at the end of October, as was the artwork for the cover. The book is in the production queue right now and the soft cover version of it will go on sale in late November, but only via the Feed-a-Read website initially. By mid January 2019, the book will be able to be purchased from any of the on-line book stores.

Unearthed this week in my mother's loft are some hitherto unseen technical notes my grandfather wrote on the Type W Aircraft Transmitter that was used during WW1. I will add a photo here but will eventually create a sub menu on this website and transcribe my grandfather's notes for anyone who is interested in the early days of military airborne wireless installations.

Here is a photograph of part of the front page of an album of WW1 photographs donated to Bungay Museum by the descendants of a local photgrapher, Alan Verso Clark, who served as a photographer with 6 Squadron during WW1.

A photo album taken by a photographer serving with 6 Squadron during WW1 has recently come to light after it was donated to Bungay Museum in Suffolk. Though I have yet to view the album, the Museum's curator, Chris Reeves, has permitted me to use any of the photographs contained in the album, so long as I acknowledge Bungay Museum as holding copyright. I have included her just two photos, the first being part of the front page and the second a rare photograph of a mobile photographic laboratory, used by 6 Squadron to process the plates taken by various aircrew members and print photographs of the targets to be used in artillery observation missions.

On Sunday the 20th May, a one-day exhibition ‘Abeele tijdens de Groote Oorlog’ (Abeele during the Great War) took place during the ‘Abeele kerremesse’ funfair at the village’s community centre d’ Hoge Schole. Though I was unable to attend, there should have been on displayu significant content regarding 6 Squadron (I provided details as to 6 Squadron's involvement with the local community during the two and a half years it was based at Abeele, from April 1915 to November 1917). Hopefully I will be able to add a photo of the poster advertising the event to my website in coming weeks. The organisers of the event were also hoping to conduct a 'fly-in' weekend on the site of the WW1 Royal Air Force aerodrome, complete with replica / restored WW1 aircraft, but have struck a few logistical problems which have delayed the project.

The next book to be published is nearing completion and I have taken time out to design the cover image. I have taken one of the aerial photographs taken by a 6 Squadron pilot over St Eloi three days before the allied attack at Messines (4th June 1917) as a background image which extends from the front to the rear cover. This photo has been kept in its original sepia tone and shows the utter devastation of the region even before the mines were exploded beneath the Messines ridge, as well as some of the St Eloi craters that were crteated one year earlier during the Battle of St Eloi. I have overlaid this background image with a picture of 6 Squadron's RE8, Serial No: A3675, taken of a model I made for the main image on my website some years ago. To make the overall picture more realistic, I bought a plastic airmen kit of the same scale (1:32) from a modelling company in the Ukraine and modified two of the men to make the pilot and observer. Apart from overlaying the RE8 on top of the background, no photoshopping was necessary, as I wanted the reader to see the true picture of what the ground troops had to put up with on the ground. The zig-zag lines are sections of trenches, though I cannot say whether they were allied or German trenches.

As part of the research process for my next book, I have come across a 6 Squadron observer who was wounded in action during WW1 but died from his injuries a year after the Armistice was signed. Because he died in a military hospital, his link to 6 Squadron was lost until now. Here is the story of what happened to 2nd Lt Frederick Charles Cook. On the afternoon of 30th August 1918, 2nd Lt B J McDonald and his observer 2nd Lt Frederick Charles Cook (a 2nd Lt in the Bedfordshire Regiment before transferring into the Royal Flying Corps, training as an observer and then being granted a temporary commission as 2nd Lieutenant Obs in the RAF on the 5th August 1918) set out from 6 Squadron’s base at Acq to conduct a Contact Patrol in RE8 Serial E8. The patrol that day was over an area between Gavel and Fontaine-les-Croisilles, a few miles to the west of Cambrai. At some point in the mission McDonald and Cook's RE8 came under attack from an enemy aircraft and they were shot down, with Lt McDonald killed and Lt Cook severely wounded in the back and head. Both men were listed as ‘Missing in Action’, believed dead, but Lt Cook was taken alive and made a prisoner of war by the Germans. After the Armistice (I have been unable to determine the date), Lt Cook was repatriated and shipped back home to the London Hospital for assessment and then transferred to the Empire Hospital in Westminster, a War Office hospital dedicated to the treatment of officers suffering from traumatic paraplegia and brain injuries caused by bullet and shrapnel wounds. There Frederick Cook remained without any improvement to his condition, until he died of Paraplegic Hepatitis on the 9th October 1919, just twenty-one years of age. His death occurred shortly before the Empire Hospital was closed down and transformed into the Grange Rochester Hotel, which exists to this day. Lieutenant Cook was laid to rest in the Luton General Cemetery, only two miles from his parents' home. Though Fredrick Cook's name is recorded on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database as a Royal Air Force officer who gave his life for his country, there is no mention that he was serving with 6 Squadron at the time he suffered the injuries that eventually killed him.

Bentley GT3 No 18A racing across Skyline at Bathurst into the early morning sun, well clear of the first accident of the day (see image on large screen) in what was to be a 16 safety car 12-hour race, the 2018 Liqui-Moly.

I recently went for a long drive in the darling Downs region of Southern Queensland and stopped overnight in the small town of Killarney. With nothing open save the pub and newsagent, I bought a Motor magazine and sat down on the verandah of the rented cabin, watching the sunset and drinking a beer while I read the 'Feedback' section. Straightaway I noticed two letters criticising (unfairly in my opinion) two Ford motorcars that are in my garage, a Focus RS and a Mustang GT. Normally I would not be inclined to respond to such subjective criticisms, but with time on my hands, I fired off an email to the magazine's publisher in the aim of putting the record straight. Imagine my surprise when I picked up the Motor Annual 2017 a few weeks later to see my email printed in full, complete with a favourable comment from the editor. I thought I would add it to my website so that perhaps it will come up on a Google search for anyone wanting to know what its like to own these cars - straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

On the first day of the Battle of Messines, 7th June 1917, 6 Squadron experienced the highest number of flying casualties for any single day of the First World War, a statistic not to be equalled in the 103 years since the squadron was formed. Over a few short hours, four men were killed, three were injured and one was taken prisoner of war. The crew of one of the aircraft lost that day (RE8 Serial No A3214) were reported as 'Killed in Action', though their bodies were never returned to the Squadron for burial at Lijssenhoek Military Cemetery, as was customary for 6 Squadron. Instead, the final resting place of Sergeant Louis Gray (pilot) was the Aeroplane Cemetery on the road between Ypres and Zonnebeke and that of 2nd Lt Morrice Halliday (Gray's observer) several kilometres to the north at the Poelcappelle Military Cemetery, both cemeteries situated a long way from the site of the crash in German-held territory near Hill 60. With the help of CWGC's recent release of a large number of grave registration documents and other official records, I can now reveal exactly what happened to the two airmen. Sometime after the RE8 of Sergeant Gray and Lieutenant Halliday was brought down in flames by German anti-aircraft fire and crashed on enemy territory in the vicinity of Hill 60, the bodies of the two men were retrieved by the allies and their aircraft destroyed by shellfire to prevent it falling into enemy hands. At that time, Lt Halliday's body was unable to be identified and he was buried in a makeshift graveyard by the side of the road leading to Sanctuary Wood just to the east of the village of Zillebeke (Map Grid Ref: 28.I.23.c.85.60), along with the bodies of six soldiers. Only one of the soldiers was identified and none of the graves bore headstones. It is unclear where Sergeant Gray was buried, though it would have been close to the village of Zillebeke and in a makeshift graveyard (see notes below). With some 26,000 allied casualties sustained during the first day of the Battle of Messines, little priority would have been given to the organisation of burying the dead. The bodies of the two men remained undisturbed until after the war, when the Imperial War Graves Commission determined that the remains of the fallen should not be repatriated to the UK but instead honoured where they fell, but in properly designed cemeteries with standardised headstones, no matter the rank of the serviceman. A department was formed in the name of 'Concentration of Graves (Exhumation and Reburials)', whose task was to exhume the remains from informal roadside burial grounds and small cemeteries and rebury them in existing or newly-created cemeteries, each burial marked with a headstone. In addition, every effort would be taken to identify those bodies initially designated as an 'Unknown Soldier'. In accordance with the new directive, on the 14th June 1920, the bodies of sixteen British soldiers (9 ‘unknown’ and 7 identified) as well as 1 Royal Flying Corps sergeant were exhumed from a number of small burial grounds around Zillebeke and reburied collectively in the Aeroplane Cemetery, located just to the north-east of Ypres on the N332 road to Zonnebeke (Map Grid Ref: 28.I.05.b.2.8). Sergeant Louis Gray was identified as the Royal Flying Corps sergeant. At the same time, twenty bodies from the Bedford House Cemetery (Enclosure No 5) and twenty-three from the Lock 8 Cemetery (Map Grid Ref: 28.I.26.c - approximately 2.5 kilometres south-west of Zillebeke) were also exhumed and concentrated into the Aeroplane Cemetery. Three years later, on the 31st October 1923, the bodies of the servicemen buried with 2nd Lt Morrice Halliday at the informal cemetery 500 metres east of Zillebeke, were exhumed, along with 2nd Lt Halliday, and taken to the cemetery at Poelkapelle. After further investigations, the identities of four of the seven bodies were determined, including that of Lt Mortice Halliday, and the men were re-buried with appropriately carved headstones. The mystery has been solved.

I have offered to be part of a group of alumni at my old high school ('Glyn Grammar School for Boys' as it was known back in the 'sixties) in providing mentoring to current students. This has be been arranged by Future First, an organisation who in its own words ". . . . is a national education charity that helps state schools and colleges to build alumni communities. At the core of our work is the drive to ensure that no young person’s future is limited by their background." As part of this initiative, Future First is producing posters of those who are willing to engage with and mentor current students of their old school and I have reproduced a draft image of the poster Future First has prepared of me.

I have just completed the diary entry for 6 Squadron's activities during the month of September 1917, exactly 100 years ago. Though a work of fiction, the details contained in "Wish You Were Here" are 100% accurate and are based on squadron records, the research for my first book, "For God, England and Ethel" and my grandfather's war diaries. I have reprinted an extract here but you can find the full text by selecting 'MY BOOKS' and 'WISH YOU WERE HERE' tab on the main menu. "For the whole of September, our machines have been working exclusively with X Corps along a small section of Front only 3,500 yards wide. This has been made possible by means of a recent development that enables wireless operators at the batteries to differentiate between ‘their’ aircraft and others that may be flying within range of their receivers. The timing couldn’t have been better as we were informed at short notice of a big allied ‘Push’ along the Menin Road [Ed: the start of the 3rd Offensive in the Battle of Passchendaele or Third Ypres] planned for the morning of the 20th September, with artillery and men from other British army Divisions brought in to effectively double the fire power along the Front in that area. With showers, strong winds (up to 40 mph) and mist down to 500 feet over the whole of the six-day offensive, I heard there was a lot of complaining in the officers’ mess. The weather forecast for October doesn’t appear to be much better, so we will all just have to get used to it."

One of my recent WW1 queries involved determining the exact location of Deimlingseck, where on the 31st July 1917 (the first day of the Battle for Passchendaele) a British RE8 crashed, killing both the pilot and observer. The bodies of the two men were never recovered as their aircraft came down behind the lines where the area was constantly bombarded by allied guns. Thanks to the help of Trevor Henshaw in England and Jerome Grosse in Belgium, the exact location of Deimlingseck is the intersection of Wervikstraat (N303) and Menenstraat (N8). close to the Belgian village of Gheluvelt. I have attached two images, one showing the WW1 map grid reference for the location - 28.J.30.c.01.80 - and the other the present day overhead satellite image courtesy of Google. For the story of why this location was named Deimlingseck by the German army during WW1, a good account can be found on the Aerodrome website.