Yorks and Lancs Exhibition Opening at Clifton Park Museum

Last Sunday saw the open day for the new Yorks and Lancs exhibition at Clifton Park Museum, Rotherham. I have been looking forward to seeing the new housing for the Y&L for some time now and spent a great afternoon checking out the open day as well as the exhibition. The museum had gone all out and pulled in First and Second World War re-enactors, the latter brought this Bren Carrier with them:

It was a restored original and really looked in excellent shape.

A lot of hard work had obviously gone into getting it all into working order again.

One thing I learned was that the radio sets also had Russian printed on them in the originals, ready for the lend-lease schemes.

Then the chaps took themselves off on a patrol around the park.

There was also this Diamond 960 truck, which again had been lovingly restored.

The small, but nonetheless interesting First World War re-enactment stall had some good reproduction kit.

Including a few grenades and various other trench weapons.

There was also the Band of the King's Division to entertain everyone.

Inside the museum was a small selection of finds from Serre in France where some of the battalions of the Y&L attacked on the first day of the Somme. It's impossible to say whether these finds were actually from that attack or not, though...

There was even a wargame going on in the museum, a 28mm British attack during the Normandy campaign.

Then it was upstairs to the exhibition proper, the new displays are well lit and not crammed full of artefacts as they once were in the old museum.

There were uniforms from all the periods that the Y&L were active.

Bringing us all the way up to the First World War.

This is the original grave marker of a chap who went all the way through the war only to be killed in a motor accident in 1919, weeks before his unit was about to return to Britain.