Welcome to edition #2 of Napoo!, the newsletter of the Long, Long Trail website.
A belated Happy New Year to all supporters of the site. You continued contribution goes a long way to covering the costs, ensuring that it is secure from hackers, safe from viruses and hosted on excellent fast servers that do not crash. It is greatly appreciated.
Two things to tell you about.
Site content moving into areas accessible only to supporters
All existing articles that are in the Long, Long Trail will be gradually moved inside the Patreon boundary, and all new articles that I write will be created there, with just a teaser appearing on the Long, Long Trail itself. Articles do not include my main pages of regiments, divisions, definitions of units, etc but are most often stories based on specific men or events I have researched. As an existing Patreon patron of the site, you will be able to access them all. This is not only to provide you with something in reward for your donations, but to keep the content out of being scraped and harvested for AI purposes. I am still testing it all out before I begin shifting content inside Patreon boundary, but I hope to begin that soon.
I am also playing about with video creation, so some of the future articles will be presented that way yet remain as a factually accurate, reliable source of information.
Some time ago I offered to make accessible the many officers’ service records that I have accumulated over the years. The initial take-up was very weak and I shelved it. But someone asked me about at after the issue of Napoo! #1, and I am looking at it again. You asking and me then sending you a copy is a faff, so I am looking at how to do it online. It is technically easy to do. I just need to upload the photos to a server and give you a password (if I can make it your Patreon password, so much the better.) Trouble is, there are so many records and so many individual documents it needs a huge online storage space. I may have a way to do it: watch this space.
I feel a book coming on
My main activity at present is in researching and writing a history of the 1st South Staffordshire Regiment, a unit that some of you will know has interested me for decades. There will be a single volume history, but with a companion which is a compilation of biographies of every officer who served with the battalion. That is proving quite fascinating. Two points stand out for me. One is how many of the officers came from large families, often having as many as six or seven siblings. This appears to be true regardless of “class.” The other is how many of those who were war time commissions stayed in the army as a career after the conflict was over. Many more than I would have anticipated. Several had most distinguished careers. I am now more than half way through the writing of both books and hope to bring news of their publication in the near future.
That’s about it for now. Take care.
Chris